Decennial
by fayevalentines
Summary: The ten years and ten separate times that Uchiha Sasuke catches himself staring at Haruno Sakura's back chronicled his descent into a maddening, consuming and achingly prosaic lunacy he fearfully acknowledges as love. Canon and Post-canon. SasuSaku.
1. The first, second and third

**Decennial  
_adj.  
_**Relating to or lasting for ten years.

**_–_**

_Ten times._

_Ten years._

_Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura's back.  
_

_****__–_

Clothed in a red blouse with a white circle emblazoned on the center, Sakura's back was an ordinary sight– porcelain white flesh, taut muscles and bones just like the rest of her body. There was nothing alarmingly unique– her back was a ninja's back, always tense, always ready for action and always suspicious. So, why was it so..._enigmatic_ to him? Uchiha Sasuke could not pinpoint what it was about this banal vision– a small square of red and an all-too-ordinary component of Haruno Sakura– that captured his eyes.

The ten years and ten separate times that he catches himself staring at her ordinary back chronicled his descent into a maddening, consuming and achingly prosaic lunacy he fearfully acknowledges as love.

A love shared between Sasuke– a forlorn avenger, redeemed traitor, death's favorite victim, the unsuspecting lover, the last Uchiha and Sakura– the lovelorn, fearsome fighter and skilled healer, death's most vicious combatant, a stubborn lover and the relentless lady of spring, unraveling over ten moments (from children to killers to lovers) painted over a stretch of ten years (of protecting, unsolicited hugs and hand holding, blood and death, crying and coming together).

_–_

_"This time…it's time for you to watch my back!"_

_–_

**01.**  
_(12 years old. Sasuke wakes up after being unconscious from the cursed seal.)_

The corner of Sasuke's neck still felt sore from where he was bitten. He felt a slight sting throbbing from the mark imprinted on his fevered skin. The memories of what happened before came to him in fleeting instances– Orochimaru biting him, the overwhelming pain that engulfed his body, the Chunin exams and the Heaven and Earth scrolls. The sound of fighting caught his attention followed by a shrill scream that stopped him in his tracks. Sasuke felt his cursed seal acting up and he made no attempt to stop it. _It was Sakura's voice._

Pink hair and a red back came into view when he rushed out from the clearing. He spotted messy pink strands of hair strewn across the muddy terrain and his eye instinctually darted to a broken figure lying in the mud, an image of desperation, fighting back with gritted teeth, bloodied hands and swollen eyes. His own memories clashed with the image before him– Sakura who prided herself on useless theoretical knowledge, whose hands trembled as she clutched nervously onto a kunai she knew cannot defend her, who watched with fearful eyes as her teammates engaged dangerously in battle and Sakura, whose unblemished porcelain skin was now caked with scars, dried blood and mud.

This was the first time Sasuke saw Sakura fight and it was pitiful. Her back, typically obscured by her pink tresses was finally visible. Even in her weakened state, hunched and desperate, Sakura fought. He unexpectedly recalled a time in the past when tears dropped on his face and a frail girl embraced with a fierce strength he never imagined existing within her tiny frame.

_Strength._ Haruno Sakura wielded her own brand of strength. A strength that went unnoticed because she was always too quick to dismiss it. Sakura thought she was more suited to play the role of the damsel in distress, she had looked the part with pretty hair and eyes but now, she was fighting, there was no one left to rescue her, she was now the one protecting and she had become a survivor, a fighter, a heroine, birthed from harsh circumstances.

When her bright green eyes caught his, he noticed Sakura struggled harder against her assailants. Sasuke heard her muffled cries, beckoning him to make his _escape _but her battered form triggered a flurry of emotions he recognized by heart– anger laced with hatred and a longing to kill.

Sasuke was an avenger, revenge flowed in his blood and killing was a nature he accepted as his own. A blinding power was now threatening to overtake him, flowing rapidly from the cursed seal and he knew that he was losing himself to it. The image of dirty pink hair and a muddy back covered in grime and blood stirred the anger inside him and unleashed a greater flood of power. Purple swirls enveloped his body and a sinister power coursed through him, making him confident that he could shatter bones, tear down walls and crush the earth.

It made Sasuke absolutely certain that he would kill whoever did this to Sakura.

–

**02.**  
_(13 years old. Sasuke is facing a difficult enemy, Gaara, who was half-possessed by Shukaku.)_

Sasuke was usually confident. If he was not, he would falter, he would let himself be prey to biting insecurities and probing questions. As he stood proud, lips twisted into a smug smirk, he tried to quiet the thrashing of his heart.

The monster growling before him was no longer the same person he fought earlier in the arena. Gaara's features had contorted into a vile form. His face was swollen and outlined with numerous veins and pale green eyes glowered with brutality and a readiness to slaughter. The sight before him took Sasuke aback but the Uchiha forced himself to maintain steady eye contact with the beast. Fear was useless in this situation. Itachi had spared his life on a whim– Sasuke had not even been worth killing, he had been a coward whose fear compelled him to run, run past the looming houses, past the long corridors littered with corpses, past the puddles of murky blood and out of his home and hell.

He had been a coward before but things were different now. _Were they?_ Sasuke gulped. He needed to prove that he was no longer the same boy with fearful eyes and a swollen heart. _If he could not take down Gaara, a traitor to Konoha and someone whose life barely mattered to him, how could he resolve to annihilate his elder brother, his own blood and kin?_

Plunging his fist into Gaara, Sasuke felt the surge of lightning connected with something physical– _was it Gaara's sand shield or his real body?_ The Uchiha was uncertain but he knew that he had made his first attack hurt. Still, Gaara seemed undeterred by the pain, Sasuke recognized the bloodlust evident in Gaara's eyes, even though he was hunched, clutching onto his bloodied side, he was still itching to fight.

Sasuke knew that the pain was only fuelling the monster's urge to kill and spill his blood. He watched as Gaara snarled at him ferociously and he jumped to the tree branches behind him. Sensing two familiar chakra signatures approaching him, he cursed. This was _his _fight and he had to end it on his own terms. Sasuke was not going to let Naruto steal his thunder _again_.

Ever since he had been announced as Gaara's opponent, this had been his battle to fight, to conquer and to _win_. But more than that, this was also the one chance he had to answer the burning questions that plagued him at night. He wanted concrete proof to something that he had always been frightened of.

_Was he ready to face his brother?_

_Was he powerful enough?_

_What was he willing to sacrifice?_

Sasuke readied himself for chidori again. The sound of screeching birds rung in his ears and even despite its sheer noisiness, Kakashi's words still echoed in his ears. _Sasuke, your daily limit for chidori is three. Anymore and your death would be certain._ The Uchiha knew that Kakashi meant well but he could not heed his advice. To face his brother, there was nothing he would not sacrifice. If he could not defeat Gaara now, it meant that nothing had changed, even after years of grueling training and stubborn determination.

The curse seal revealed itself, dark marks tattooed across the side of Sasuke's face, neck and shoulders. His anger had stimulated the curse mark and Sasuke relished the waves of power spilling from it. This was Orochimaru's brand and promise of power. It was the price the avenger paid for giving himself so fully over to the devil. With its power, Sasuke attacked Gaara again with chidori. Gaara howled in pain and Sasuke stumbled back, the pain from releasing the cursed seal assaulting him in sharp pangs. His vision blurred before him and he slammed hard onto the ground. The scorching pain that seared through his body left him grimacing in agony. His mind spun and the greenery before him turned into flashes of darkness.

Sasuke was losing consciousness quickly and he scrambled frantically to find something to grip onto, something to keep his mind from reeling and surrendering itself to the abyss. His fingers scratched roughly against a tree bark in a futile attempt but there was nothing, nothing _except_– a hand that instinctively clasped onto his own and steadied him. Sasuke recognized its contours and softness, he knew that the same hand had found his numerous times before. The feeling of Sakura's hand pressed against his own helped kept the pain at bay. As he strained his eyes to see her face, he noticed the vivid fear in her eyes that betrayed the strong unyielding grip of her hand.

Sakura does not hide her fear well but he knew that she was _strong_. Strong in a way that Naruto and him could not possibly be. Strong in a way that a person with little combat experience and endurance was. Sakura was strong because she could not rely on her weapons, ninja techniques, her speed or her agility. She could only rely on her heart and Sakura had a heart that loved endlessly.

Sasuke's vision was disappearing before him again and he braced himself for the oncoming darkness but Naruto's voice jolted him awake. The idiot's words rang loudly in his ears._ "We have to escape, Sakura-chan, hurry!"_ It pushed him to keep fighting– to fight the exhaustion and the pain, fight Sakura's steel grip that begged him to rest, stay put and leave the fight to the shining blonde hero.

_Three genins do not stand a chance against a monster like Gaara._ Sasuke knew that. His chidori had been useless against Gaara and the three of them were severely outmatched and outclassed but this was still _his_ fight.

_I need to win this fight. Don't you understand? _Sasuke tried to yell but no words escaped his lips. The pain and exhaustion that wrecked his body stole the venomous words from him and left him hunched over, pathetic and reliant on a pink-haired girl.

Instead of words, Sasuke found something else. Sakura tried not to flinch as Sasuke vomited, his face twisting in agony. The pink-haired kunoichi bit her lips, willing herself not to inhale the nauseous stench. She needed to be strong now. Her hands were still in his and her resolve was strengthening, hardened like her tight grip on Sasuke's hands.

Sakura knew that Sasuke was battling, even while his body remained still and his eyes were closed, he was fighting– fighting the urge to sink into the darkness of his mind and he was _failing_– his body was rebelling against him and Sakura's hand. She squeezed his hand. Sasuke needed to fight, it was the only thing he could do, if he lost, it was all over for him. His ultimate _failure_.

When Sakura's hand disappeared, Sasuke made a feeble attempt to stand but his knees buckled. His sharingan eyes widened when he saw Gaara, monstrous arm outstretched and fingernails long, sharp and lethal. The gruesome sight before him stole what mobility he had left and Sasuke found himself frozen, the loud hammering of his heart silencing Naruto's anguished screams and Sakura's determined ones.

A dark red robbed him of his vision of Gaara and he saw Haruno Sakura's small back before him, rife with contradictions. Her back was firm in a show of confidence but he could make out the slight tremors that rocked her body. Sakura's hands gripped tightly onto her kunai but like her confidence, the kunai was for show, she would never hit her target.

_Badump._ The sound of his heart seemed to echo endlessly in his head but the image of Sakura's red back filled his mind. _Badump. Scream. _Silence. Uchiha Sasuke realized with a chilling clarity despite his clouded mind and vision, despite the pain and despite everything, that Haruno Sakura was defending him with _nothing_. She was using herself as a shield. He panicked and a hoarse sound escaped his dry throat– a strangled scream, a desperate call for Sakura to get out, to get away from him, to _be safe_. But, his body was numb and he was unable to move.

He saw Naruto in slow motion, blonde hair a mess, blue eyes wild and frantic, moving towards his direction but Sasuke knew. There was an eerie sense of dejavu – in his inability to move, in his numbness and in seeing a person he cherished slaughtered before him. His palms begun to sweat, his breathing hitched and he felt his heart going overdrive. Sasuke saw splashes of blood in his vision. The dark blood of his family, the sticky red liquid on his brother's hands and Sakura's blood dripping down her corpse in rivulets. When these images faded, he was confronted once again with the red of Sakura's back, resilient and stubborn, like a fearless weed refusing to be stamped down. _Too late._

Her back was an unfamiliar sight to Sasuke because…he had _never _been behind her. He never faltered. He had always been the protector. Naruto and him were always a little too eager, a little too anxious and a little too determined to come to the rescue of their female teammate, as though it was part of their ongoing competition. Sasuke recalled countless times where he instinctually flung himself before Naruto and Sakura, as though not one life was gifted to him, but three– one for Sakura, one for Naruto and one for himself.

_Was sacrifice so inherent in his blood, in his being? _Then_, why?_ A nagging question popped in his head. _Why had he not done anything on the day of the massacre?_

And now Sakura's back was shielding him.

His goal had always been to defeat his brother and to avenge his clan. To realize that dream, he had to survive. For that, he endured regardless of the circumstances thrown to him and regardless of how many times he had to fling himself before Naruto and Sakura. He did not have three lives but maybe if he acted the part, believed in it, he would find his one life would count for three.

_And Sakura?_

Sakura with her small back, her vulnerability, her hair pink like her namesake, Sakura with zero combat skills and Sakura who was willing to throw her life away to save his. _One life for another_.

Gaara's mutant arm swatted Sakura away, like the weed that she was.

Sasuke's vision was finally stabilizing. He always found his feet when it was a little too late, when the deed had been done and he hated himself for that. Sasuke saw Sakura, pale and unconscious, caught in Gaara's death grip and an image of her back flashed before his mind.

"_I never want to see another important person die in front of me again."_

It was a trembling lover's back determined to protect his life even at the sacrifice of her own.

–

**03.**  
_(13 years old. Sasuke leaves Konoha and Team 7 behind.)_

The crescent moon hung low in the sky as Uchiha Sasuke listened to the heartfelt confessions of Haruno Sakura, her voice husky from crying, sobs robbing her of her breath and salty tears dripping softly to the ground. Sasuke focused on the cobblestone pavement beneath his feet and forced himself not to spare a glance back at Sakura. He cannot look back now. Not now, not when he was _this_ close to leaving.

_If he looked back, he was lost. _

Sakura's tears flowed without end and her hands shook violently. Her worst fears had materialized themselves before her. Sasuke's back before her, on a cobblestone street, late at night, making his quiet departure out of Konoha. She imagined if she had not followed her intuition, if she had smiled and allowed Naruto to walk her back. Sasuke would have left without saying goodbye. He would have willingly walked out of her life without so much of a warning, a word or…the thought of that only makes her cry harder.

Sakura does not know how to stop him. She has nothing valuable to offer an avenger who sought vengeance for the ghosts of his family. She was not strong enough to save people, she was incapable of saving anyone, let alone herself. Haruno Sakura could not save Uchiha Sasuke but she could love him. She loved Sasuke, in spite of his growing darkness, bloodshot eyes, the bloodlust that lingered longer, his scathing words and his scarce grins. Her intuition already foretold her that nothing she said could ever hope to make Sasuke stay. But, a desperate part of her wanted to believe she had some effect over the boy she loved. Sasuke's footsteps had halted. Sakura spilled words, spilled desperate promises she had no confidence of keeping, she spilled tears, and even more of her love but Sasuke is silent. A silly girl like her had little to give but she does anyway.

Sasuke tries to keep his distance and silence. If he remained quiet, he hoped that Sakura would return to her comfortable life and let him be. The minutes that passed between them with only the crescent moon interrupting their solitude felt more like hours. And Sasuke waits but Sakura does not stop. She speaks, in between tears and in between the formidable distance that separated their worlds. She is running out of words but she rambles anyway, Sakura does not stop talking because if she does, he will continue walking, words were the only thing she had to force Sasuke to a halt…even just for a little bit. Sakura offered him things he coveted once before– a new family in the form of Team 7, happiness, a peaceful life and _love_. And Sasuke does not deny that in another life, in another time, he would have gladly accepted all of that.

The Uchiha tried explaining to her, words falling from his lips, words that Sakura has pried them from his barren lips. His promise to maintain his distance and silence had been willingly broken. He spoke because he could not stand to hear her cracking voice and miserable sobs. He spoke because he did not want to hurt her. Sasuke hoped that somewhere inside of her, Sakura could find it in herself to understand why he was doing this. _Let me be_, Sasuke thought, he wanted to walk away from her crying face and shaky words and he wanted her to find comfort in her warm bed instead of his traitorous back. B_ut, we never get what we want, even in the cases of a sinner and saint._

_If you love me, let me go._ A traitorous thought. It was the same traitorous thought that Sasuke harbored because he refused to let his family go. Even in death, he recklessly pursued them. And even this close to the mouth of hell, Sakura will recklessly pursue him.

When the pink-haired kunoichi and the dark-haired avenger finally fell silent, Sasuke turned to face her, in spite of everything he had thought before. He looked back and felt regret welling up in him almost instantly. Maybe he would be lost, maybe he would be doomed to witness the vision of Sakura crying and she would haunt him like a ghost, like the rest of his family.

Sakura's heart lurched when she saw Sasuke's face. He had on a grin, his trademark grin, a slight tilt of his lips that probably constituted as Sasuke's own definition of a smile.

"_You really are annoying."_

Sakura is in shock, her lips pressed close and her eyes watering. Sakura remembered those words she always linked to Sasuke's memory by heart, it was a memory she recalled time and time again, but to Sasuke, it was likely a faint shadow of the past. _Sasuke remembered_, Sakura thought, her tears flowing even more rapidly now. Sasuke remembered the times they shared and the caustic words he gifted her many months before. But it was now…a thing of the _past_. Her red back and pink hair along with the memories of Team 7 would remain in the past where they belonged.

Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura had been bound together by some uncanny force to be on the same team with Uzumaki Naruto, fate had kept the trio together for one year, fate had given her one year to stay close to the side of the boy she loved and now, their time was up. The last particles of sand fell helplessly down the bottom of the hourglass where it truly belonged and the paths of an avenger and a lovelorn kunoichi will diverge. They were never meant to walk this far together. Sakura will go back to her warm bed and loving family and Sasuke will walk the path of an avenger alone.

When Sasuke's feet moved again, Sakura's frenzied screams assaulted him. They stabbed at him like metaphorical kunais. She threatened to scream louder even with her breaking voice but she stops when Sasuke's back disappears before her eyes. His movement was too quick for her eyes to follow and when she realized he was behind her, she is silenced.

Sasuke stared at her back. Red as it always had been, small and breakable. Such an ordinary sight should be insignificant to him but instead it was a trigger that released figments of a past he was determined to leave behind. _If he looked back, he was lost._ He silently fought against the onslaught of memories threatening to plaster his feet to the ground and he silently implored Sakura to stop shedding tears for an undeserving avenger.

The Uchiha found himself unable to peel his eyes away from the small form of her back, her short hair brushed against the nape of her neck and the white circle surrounded by red. It was a reminder of what happened in the Chunin Exams, of Sakura's own bravery and strength and of the power that Sasuke felt when the cursed seal was unleashed. Sakura's back shook violently with sobs and he allowed himself one last stare at the quivering back of a girl who loved him up until the very end.

"Sakura, _thank you_."

There were some things he knew with absolute certainty. He was an Uchiha. An avenger birthed from tragedy. His path cannot be forsaken. Team 7 was his heart and in another life, he would have stayed with them but in this one, he had to give it up. He gave his heart up. Naruto would always be his best friend and a bond he could not exterminate…and _Sakura will always love him, stubbornly, desperately and unfailingly._

Sasuke thanked her because words were all he had to give her. He was an avenger, his goal was Itachi's death and to realize that, he would sacrifice everything. _Even the trembling back of a girl who loves him._ He would give her up and leave her and the rest of the world behind as he dived headfirst into darkness.

Sasuke left a sharp precise jab at her neck and he felt something in him deflate when his name escaped her lips before her eyes closed. Her back crumpled before him like a paper crushed under the weight of something heavy and she fell. Like a disillusioned heroine finally realizing that life was not a fairy tale and that the one you love will always hurt you.

Sasuke does not let her body hit the cobblestone pavement. He catches her in a swift motion, a familiar action, one he has done many times in the past. He places her gently on the bench and stares at her broken figure. He offers her a last look, a last empty look, it was the feeling of his heart hollowing out.

A silent Sasuke parted from an unconscious Sakura.

The last of the fine sand trickled down to meet the bottom of the hourglass. It was now finally where it belonged.

–

– to be continued –

–

**Notes:** Thank you so much for reading! This fic initially started out as a one-shot but eventually got too lengthy and evolved into multiple chapters. There will be roughly_ 4 chapters_ in total. I already have them all penned out, I just need to do some minor editing and formatting. I will be posting the next chapter in_ a couple of days_. Please support me on this scary multi-chaptered ficventure! Your reviews and favorites are greatly appreciated and will continue to spur me into writing. Until the next update then!

(Cookies for those of you who guessed out where I adapted one of the lines from, it's a pretty iconic line in that fandom and I couldn't resist. Hit me up at thegoldengirl at tumblr if you feel like it!)


	2. The fourth and fifth

**Decennial  
**_**adj.  
**_Relating to or lasting for ten years.

_****__–_

"I have long since closed my eyes... My only goal is in the darkness."

___–_

**Chapter Two**

_–_

**04.  
**_(17 years old. Sasuke attempts to end Sakura.)_

When Sasuke saw pink again, something in him burned. He had no need for soft colors in his life. There was either red and black, blood and darkness, death and his clan. There was no white for salvation, no pink redemption, no green eyes that would hope to convince him only to be imbued with lies. Seeing Sakura aggravated him, it made him burn with a hatred so dark and sinister he thought only killing her would absolve.

Sakura, with her bright hair and bright eyes, with her happy family and her happy village, was a picture perfect symbolism of the wretched peace his clan had died for. Sakura who lived a life far from loneliness could never imagine what loss felt like. An overwhelming bitterness engulfed him when he recalled Itachi's last words and his double life. He bit down on his tongue to control his seething emotions but instead found the acrid taste of blood.

The pink-haired medic was calling out to him.

"Sasuke-kun! I_–_"

Sasuke sees better than he hears so, his focus remained more on her face, her eyes, her posture and her feet firmly planted on the floor. The fear and surprise in her eyes was a dangerous mix threatening to unleash itself in violent punches and poison-dipped kunais. He knew how hard she had tried to suppress her feelings but her emerald eyes, too vivid, too clear and too transparent revealed everything. He did not need his sharingan to see through Sakura, layers of her papery armor always withered away before him. She finally saw him for who he was– a destroyer, an avenger and a murderer. Revenge was in his blood and killing was his inherent nature. It shook her, slight tremors ghosting her skin, scrunching her gossamer veil of confidence that struggled to remain its stubborn stance.

Sakura stepped forward and continued speaking, surprising herself with how confident she sounded even as her palms begun to sweat inside her gloves and her own heart pounded hard against her chest. She spoke of regret, of joining him in his quest for vengeance, of betraying Konoha_ and Sasuke tried to listen but he couldn't. _Her truths and lies were melding together, a lover's voice sprouting lies and he saw in her eyes, falsehoods birthed from her supposed love. Her voice does not get through Sasuke anymore, not like it did years before, on a cold night with an incandescent crescent moon. Something in his stomach twisted when he heard her treacherous voice. He resisted the urge to break into laughter at the words of the foolish girl before him.

_What of her love? Does she know him now? Does she know his true motives? What little regret had she known in her sheltered life? Had she seen her family sentenced to death by the village she loved? Had she harbored memories as a young girl of the massacre of her loved ones? Had she regretted Itachi's life? _

_Had she ever been truly lonely?_

An irascible fury raced through his body that ignited the flame in his heart, already hot with revenge, hatred and a thirst for bloodshed. The death of Danzo had not quelled that dark desire inside him– a hunger to destroy the perfect bliss Konoha possessed that was built upon the tragedy of his clan. If he had to choose between his family and Konoha, he would always choose his family. And now he was just letting his choice be known.

Sakura had a family. She could never fanthom the true meaning of loss, at least not_ his_ loss, one that had emptied him of everything but revenge and his name. The pink-haired girl before him had warm meals waiting for her at home. _Sakura had a family._ Sasuke gritted his teeth. A mother and father who would give her the things she wanted, who would scold her and congratulate her. Those were the things he had grown up missing, precious facets of his childhood pried from the fingers of his dead family. Sakura had her family, gleaming green eyes unmarred by death and loss, her life and her happiness...because of the Uchihas' unwilling sacrifice.

That knowledge only served to aggravate Sasuke even more as he balled his fist in an attempt to subdue his emotions. Every moment that passed between the two, where he registered_ innocent_ pink hair, _lying_ green eyes her _dishonest_ voice was filling him with a frenzied rage. Her whole life and the lives of the villagers in Konoha had been declared in history as more valuable than that of his family and his clan. And the more he looked at her, the more he saw everything he hated_– _Sakura whose proud headband peeked out from tufts of pink hair, Sakura who swore to uphold a silent vow to protect the peace of her village, a flithy and frail illusion of peace that had been traded for his family. And here she was determined to throw it all away, as though it amounted to nothing.

Sasuke would show Sakura what _nothing_ truly meant.

A long time back, he had chanced upon the knowledge of Sakura's growth as a talented medical ninja– a disciple of the famed Godaime who hailed from the accursed Senju line that had driven his own clan into bottomless despair. The news of Sasori's death had reached Orochimaru who was surprised to learn of the puppet master's alleged killer. The sannin even commented on Sakura's expertise in poison. That new knowledge had never proven much useful until now when he had the chance to use it against her.

Sasuke instructed Sakura to kill Karin because he knew she would fail.

The Uchiha took in the face of the pink-haired girl before him, who was trying with much difficulty to mask her feelings of unease. It only made him more determined to break her, to see her attempt to take on the bloodied role of a ruthless killer and have her porcelain hands stained with the crimson blood of the people she had made an oath to save.

Killing was not her nature. He knew her– _a nurturer, a healer and a lover_. He saw how tempting Sakura, an impeccable embodiment of life, looked in Death's eyes. In the back of his mind, a thought springed up, he had once recalled of her as a fighter, a heroine, a survivor, but it was only for a split fleeting second. The same amount of time it would have taken for him to render her into a bloodied corpse. Maybe he would do Death a favor. Sasuke wanted nothing more than to see the light fade from her lying emerald eyes.

Part of him wanted to turn Sakura into a traitor, to see her spiral into the same madness he had and to see what the darkness would do to cherry blossom hair and spring eyes. He wanted her to be the first of many who would taste his bitter medicine.

_(He wanted her to yell at him accusingly, not continue to love him despite everything. Her unwavering love was a sick reminder of the Senjus and her own cluelessness. Although none of it was any fault of hers, Sasuke resented her for it anyway.)_

As Sakura made her way hesitantly towards Karin, Sasuke saw her hands curled tightly around a kunai, dipped in lethal poison. He felt his heart darkened. He saw through Sakura's pretenses and preaching of love. What she had desired was for the kunai to be plunged into his heart, for the poison to drain the color from his face– she had wanted to end him. When she finally reached Karin, Sasuke readied the technique that had long become a part of him. He was exhausted from his fight with Danzo but the chidori came naturally. He does not have a limit now, not like in the past. Kakashi's past words resonated poignantly in his mind. _The chidori is used to protect your loved ones._

He aimed the chidori at Sakura's back. This was him protecting the stained memory of his clan and this was him putting a last and definite full stop to his memories of Sakura. The image of her back facing him provoked something– remnants of the past, a nostalgic pastiche of sentiments, memories and soft giggles but he does not look to that past anymore. The only past he acknowledged was that of his family and the only future he headed towards was enshrouded in a cloak of darkness.

Sasuke was plummeting and his tumbling freefall was giving rise to the sensation of vertigo.

He crashed and burned, his body scorching as it descended even deeper into the heart of darkness, and this time, he would not make the same mistake he did before. He would take everyone down with him, including Sakura, with her trembling lover's back. Her back now stared at him with a strange defiance, with an uncommon firmness, and with red, a crimson red that reminded him of her deceitful love and…blood. _Do you kill the person you love?_ Haruno Sakura who had professed her love for him had now resolved to use the same love as a pretext to murder him. He pushed any recollections of her away and concentrated on fire and blood. His hand dived towards the direction of Sakura's back and his lips curled into a twisted smile. Sasuke caught sight of her gleaming emerald eyes widening in horror but he does not look at them.

He does not want to remember happier times and a silly pink-haired girl confessing her love to him while she shivered from the chilly winds of the night. Sasuke wanted to see Sakura as a liar, as a traitor and as a corpse, not the fallible girl who only ever loved him like he was her whole world.

"Sasuke, stop."

Karin's lips muttered something that escaped his ears. The sound of shrieking lightning drowned everything else.

He held the image of Sakura's bloodied back and his tainted clan close to him.

–

**05.  
**_(17 years old. Sasuke sees the full extent of Sakura's ability.)_

Sasuke allowed himself a small smirk, allowed himself a short moment to really take in the fact that he was finally fighting beside Naruto and not fighting the blonde. He had spent too long burying himself in hatred, scrambling in the darkness trying to seek out his true purpose beyond revenge and now he was here and he was unaccustomed to how _different_ being by Naruto's side is.

Underneath that sentimental feeling (that he does not admit), is a somber resignation at something he realized upon his decision to ally with the blonde.

He knew how drastically things had changed since their paths last diverged but he never expected _this_. Naruto and his paths had converged and he recognized– in Naruto's elation, in the presence of the Fourth Hokage who stood proudly by his son's side, in the ninjas that cheered Naruto on and banded behind him, in the blonde's immense power and his newfound strength accompanied by another unreal growth spurt– that it was almost as though Naruto and him had traded lives and positions. They had both walked down paths so dissimilar yet so uncannily parallel.

Before, Sasuke's heart used to be abundant. The Uchiha manor would light up at night, alive with the sounds of chatter and faint laughter. He would smell the scent of cooking wafting through the air and feel comforted by his father's heavy breathing. He used to have loved ones. And his reputable clan had given him status, prestige and pride. Sasuke had been a prodigy admired by many before and now, every one of those intangible things had crumbled to dust, burned to unrecognizable ashes by dark flames so strong and intense that even Sasuke could not control it. He had lost everything.

Now, Naruto, who had nothing before, possessed the important bits that had constituted to Sasuke's childhood before the massacre. Naruto whose foolish dream of becoming a Hokage was now inching itself closer and closer to materialization distinguished itself so clearly from Sasuke's goals. His own desire to take that same seat was only treated with suspicion, confusion and disdain. The smirk playing on the Uchiha's lips deepened and he thought derisively, _life was making a mockery of him_.

Sasuke had almost forgotten the almost carefree way he used to live as a child– a life embroiled in lies, an avenger with simple ambitions and the easy comfort of being by Team 7's side. He does not regret anything he had done, he would kill the same manner, commit the same crimes, betray the same village and if he had to choose again, he would leave Konoha every single time, irregardless of Sakura's tears and anguished words or Naruto's punches and sorrowful screams.

Had Sasuke stayed on, he would have softened and melted into the embraces of Naruto and Sakura. He would have forgotten about being an avenger, choosing instead the simple life of a shinobi, choosing nights at Ichiraku Ramen squabbling with a hot-headed blonde instead of fighting Orochimaru, opting to find a surrogate father in Kakashi when he could have been fighting his real kin and blood, Itachi. He would have given up the battle with his demons, forsaking his name and destiny in exchange for intimate conversations with a pink-haired kunoichi that he always found himself more willing to open up to.

If he had not left Konoha, he would have never found out the truth.

Sasuke knew there was only one whom he regretted killing. One person whose life he would never tire of mourning over but he does not have in it his heart to say his name. He allowed himself to conjure up one last image of his older brother, eyes crinkled and lips stretched into a smile. It was the way he remembered Itachi best. When Sasuke opened his eyes, he was back to reality, back to a war waged by Uchiha Obito and Uchiha Madara, his own blood from a clan he thought had been long extinguished. When he opened his eyes, he saw Sakura.

"…Sasuke-kun?"

Sakura's voice called out to him and he turned. Her eyes were still emerald green, bright, clear and transparent and he detected no malice, only a flicker of surprise and slight joy at seeing him. Sasuke recalled how intensely her eyes shone in the blue light of his chidori, the sound of screeching birds and her silent screams. When he greeted her, her name felt strained on his tongue. It is then that he tasted the metallic tang of blood. He had been biting down on his tongue the whole time.

"Sasuke! Come on!" The effervescent blonde yelled, clearly excited to be fighting by Sasuke's side again.

As Naruto and him dashed forward to attack, Sakura joined them from the side much to the blonde's dismay. Naruto tried to reason with her. He beckoned her to focus on healing the injured, desperately wanting Sakura to retreat to safety at the sidelines and to leave the fighting to her teammates_ (as she always had in the past)_. Sasuke could tell from the look on Sakura's face that she was visibly upset. Team 7 had been finally reunited, parallel lines going their ways for so long only to intersect again but the same scene was replaying itself. Sasuke picked up the slight irritation that glowed in Sakura's eyes for a few long moments before an eerie calm washed over it. She disappeared from his vision and he concentrated on fighting.

The next time he caught sight of Sakura, she had just finished telling Naruto off. A light purple diamond adorned her white forehead and she brimmed with confidence, one that matched her squared shoulders, proud smirk and clenched fists. This was the power she had been harnessing patiently for years and she was eager to finally be able to use it. Sakura leapt at the monsters before them, determined to prove that she was capable, that she could fight and that she would not be relegated to the sidelines again and Sasuke...does not ruin her moment. He watched silently while Naruto gaped and yelled in retaliation. Sakura was no longer the same girl Naruto and him had left trailing behind them, she had honed her own strength, burnished a power that was uniquely hers, she was a heroine and she was not going to go down without fighting.

Sasuke's eyes followed Sakura's back as it dived into the dusty battlefield, her red back was swollen with pride and confidence. It was no longer the small vulnerable back that shook alongside loud sobs. That image of the past had evolved into the sight before him. And it was not something he was truly accustomed to because he remembered– protecting her, speeding past her and always being ahead of her. Naruto and him had bypassed the pink-haired girl many times. Sometimes, too absorbed in their rivalry and other times, out of their natural instinct to protect her, leaving Sakura breathless, trying to catch up.

Now, Sasuke noticed that he was no longer in front or before Sakura. She was not even beside him and her footsteps clearly do not fall with his. She was before him, in front of him, standing tall and proud, no longer breathless. She was soaring straight ahead and Sasuke, who shared his brother's fondness for birds, saw a scarlet avian in her. Her shoulders that seemed narrow in his memory had now grown broad, better suiting her developed frame.

Sasuke finally_ sees _Sakura after so long and he relishes the fearsome sight of her back, full of purpose and strength like the shining brilliance of a coal that had been through enormous heat _(fire)_ and pressure _(blood)_ and turned out a sparkling diamond. He does not think of how her eyes widened when she saw his chidori or how the red of her back had once triggered his bloodlust. Instead, he focused only on her and her bravado.

_(Somewhere in the back of his mind, he saw blue light, green eyes and a bloodied back, he had tried to end her before and there will be no one, including himself, that will ever let him forget that.)_

There was a deafening thud, a sound that reverberated in his mind, rivaling even the screeching birds of his chidori. It was the sound of Sakura's victorious fists glowing brilliantly with green chakra. When the dust finally settled, he noticed Naruto's horrified expression and his own proud smirk, a genuine one that displayed his pride at witnessing Sakura in all her glory. _A nurturer, a healer, a lover, a fighter, a heroine, a survivor...Sakura. _

Sasuke saw the red back turn to reveal a dust-covered face with small smile.

Sakura's smile was tender and vivid, befitting a girl named after cherry blossoms and spring fields.

–

– to be continued –

–

**Notes: **Thank you_ so much_ for the reviews, follows and favorites! It really means the world to me. Sometimes (or most of the times) publishing a piece of writing, especially one that involves characters you hold close to your heart, really feels a lot like sharing a piece of your soul. It's both frightening and exhilirating. Once again, do share your thoughts and feelings with me! I truly do appreciate all the support I've garnered.

Special cheers and mention also to _LazyBass_ for identifying Dany's quote from ADWD that I adapted for Sasuke in the previous chapter. I have added another reference in this chapter too, haha!

I debated for a really long time whether to include Sasuke and Sakura's first Shippuden meeting, when they just turned 16 (and had been with Sai) but decided to omit it because canonically, I didn't think he truly had the time to look/observe Sakura's back. So, I jumped straight to the bridge scene and then later on to Team 7's official reunion. Two important scenes to me that could possibly encapsulate Sasuke and Sakura's Shippuden interactions/relationship. Additionally, Naruto and Sasuke's reversal of positions in relation to Konoha and their past is not something I take full credit for. It was raised in koknowha's post on Tumblr which highlighted the parallels between the two. I really enjoyed that and could not reisist writing a little about it.

The next update would be posted roughly by the end of the week, and with the end of this chapter, we are heading towards post-canon territory now. *gulps* Also, just a FYI– some of the chapters will have two instances while others have three (since I can't divide ten equally).

_Thank you!_


	3. The sixth, seventh and eighth

**Decennial  
**_adj.__**  
**_Relating to or lasting for ten years.

_–_

"Seeking revenge...that won't be bring anyone happiness. Nobody at all. Not you and not me."

_–_

**Chapter Three**

_–_

**06.  
**_(17 years old. An exhausted Sasuke is returning back with Sakura and Naruto after the war.)_

It had been at least two weeks since Sasuke had last seen Sakura's display of inhumane strength. They had separated afterwards, fighting in disparate instances and places, divided because Sakura was a healer before she was a fighter and Sasuke was a fighter, through and through. While he focused on the demise of his relatives, shedding blood, killing and war waging, Sakura focused on cleansing blood off battered bodies and stealing back lives that had wandered unknowingly into Death's hand.

A long drawn war of many tears, blood and losses had finally come to an end and Sasuke who had been feeling haughty and smug before was now weary. The past three years spent chasing goal after goal had finally taken a toll on him and he felt a long delayed exhaustion spreading itself over his being and weighing down on his heart. If he stopped now, he was certain he would fall but instead he moved through the forest with the same instinct that had made him a survivor.

Sasuke's eyes throbbed, strained from overusing the sharingan and he wanted nothing more than to finally give in to sleep, but instead his eyes remained open, transfixed on the pink-haired girl before him, charcoal black eyes absorbed on the red square of her back. His mind must have been seeking for something amidst this overwhelming greenery to pull him away from the clammy hands of sleep. Everything was green around him– thick foliage of leaves blocked out the sun and soft green grass below him tempting him with the prospect of rest. Sakura's back, a brilliant burst of red in its resplendent glory was like a crimson red flag blazing proudly in the wind.

He saw _red_– not blood, flames, his family, loss and…death. He saw red and it was Sakura, with petal pink hair, green eyes, a stubborn green glow in her hands and…the blue glare of his chidori illuminating her already radiant features. When Sasuke squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, in an attempt to rinse the image of his chidori from his mind, Sakura's crimson back had turned into a bloodied mess. The sticky blood was almost unrecognizable against the red of her blouse. The same blood now leaked from his eyes like bloodied tears. Sasuke took a deep breath and felt the rush of oxygen fill his lungs and then he breathed in…the coppery scent of blood.

Sasuke had never hallucinated this vividly before, at least not in the past three years. He remembered distantly when illusions of his parents appeared before him in the darkness of his mind. Up until now, those ghosts had never before materialized in reality, they had remained trapped in the prison of his mind but Sasuke could never get rid of them – he was unable to banish the ghosts of his family completely. But at the very least, he thought that he had possessed some semblance of control over them, preventing them from crossing the invisible edge between delusions and reality with what little mental strength he had possessed.

Like many instances in his past, he was wrong _again_. Sakura's ravaged back, soaked in blood was the first ghost that transcended the boundaries of his mind into reality. It chipped away at Sasuke's tenuous self-control, one that he had held onto desperately as a child. A long sigh escaped his lips, one that he felt like he had been withholding for years. The Uchiha thought he could finally relax his iron grip and abandon the rusty gates that barricaded his mind. He wanted to give in to a dreamless sleep. But, his ghosts would not leave him.

For so long, his mind had scrambled in a frantic attempt to continuously move forward. Plan after plan, day after day and now it was all _over_. Sasuke felt his mind growing dull, empty and silent. He had assumed right from the start that he was _always_ empty, that he had long been hollowed out when he made the decision to leave Konoha but the truth was the exact opposite. Sasuke's mind had been in a frenetic motion, working feverishly through everything, occupied with plans, with training, with _revenge_ and now that all of it was gone, the emptiness and silence of his own mind felt deadening.

So, he welcomed the piercing screech of his chidori and distorted images of Sakura's back into the desolate graveyard that had once been his stronghold. He let Sakura haunt him. Sasuke knows that it will not take long for his other ghosts and demons to infest this space. It will not take long for madness to consume him again. Madness was in his blood and madness crept in the darkened corners of his mind.

While his mind struggled with the loss of its bustling activity, his heart was the opposite– exhaustion seeping in along with a flurry of emotions elicited just by mere thought. Now, he had the time to think of things apart from revenge and when he did dwelled on his feelings, he felt more than he truly wanted.

There was_ loss_– a new and far more profound sense of loneliness he never imagined possible, a past he was afraid to abandon and a future he was frightened to come to terms with. With the ninja war long concluded, Sasuke felt the onset of another battle, his mind and heart were in conflict, they were clashing and fighting, one empty and one brimming.

Uchiha Sasuke had done everything he had set out to do fearlessly and now– _what?_

_Where was his happiness? _

The proud fighter by Naruto's side in the battlefield was a façade that was withering, chipping away and revealing…_Sasuke_. Anxious and exhausted. Separated from his clan and removed from his hard exterior, Sasuke felt lonely and terrifying empty. The thought of Konoha had once infuriated him. In that past, it had fuelled his desire for revenge but now it struck a sinking feeling of fear. He remembered wanting to destroy Konoha, envisioning its demise in the same flames that birthed his clan and seeking a perverted gratification in the faces of those who finally had a taste of the bitter medicine he had grown up swallowing.

But now– he was coming _back_.

After Itachi, after fighting in the war on the hero's side and after playing the parts of the antagonist, the anti-hero, the prodigy fallen from grace, the seemingly redeemed villain, he was returning back and reprising the role of the lost boy returning to a vacant cursed compound.

When he sees_ red_ again, it was no longer the blood on Sakura's back he had hallucinated before, it was blood on the floorboards of his living room, blood dripping from his brother's lips and blood on his hands. The more vivid those imageries grew, the more concrete the plethora of names carved on an endless cemetery seemed. He had not visited the cemetery in years but its image felt fresh in his memory. Sasuke was shaking now, his eyes were watering but he only felt blood sliding down his cheeks. Fear was taking yet another thing away from him– his control and composure.

He felt something smacked him hard on the back and turned to see Naruto by his side, a look of concern thwarting his usually sunny features. The blonde had been behind him the whole time as part of their formation.

"Are you okay?" Naruto questioned, gripping his friend's shoulder roughly.

"…_Red."_ Sasuke mumbled unconsciously.

"Red?" The blonde repeated in confusion. He was about to bombard Sasuke with more questions when the Uchiha brushed his hand aside roughly, his reverie had been broken and the aloofness was back.

"I'm fine." Sasuke scoffed but his eyes betrayed him.

Sasuke did not need Naruto looming over him, staring at him with pitiful eyes and a nauseatingly sad expression, as though he was someone incapable of taking care of himself, as though he needed coddling and as though he was staring to look as broken as he was feeling inside. _He was Naruto's equal._ The last thing he needed was pity. He was an Uchiha and he had some pride, even if he did not have much of anything else left.

Naruto knew he was oblivious to most things but he could not shrug off the feeling that something was amiss with the retired avenger. Sasuke always had a slightly volatile temperament but the blonde sensed that this time, things were different. The image of Sasuke before him shaking, even while his posture remained rigid and tense, had etched itself deep into the blonde's mind. He had seen Sasuke angry, bitter, hateful and smug but he had never seen Sasuke this shaken, this ready to break and this ready to let go.

"What are you talking about, 'suke?" Naruto sped forward and pressed stubbornly. "Red? What's red here, huh?"

Sasuke kept silent, choosing to ignore the babbling words of the blonde.

In Naruto's mind, the color red was his mother's hair, sticky foul blood and the old stools at Ichiraku Ramen...but Sakura had patched them up before they started on their journey back, there should be no traces of blood left. As Naruto did a cursory sweep of their surroundings, his eyes stopped at the only red within their line of sight. _Red_. His mother's hair. The blood of the dying, the living and the dead. Ramen red. Red of Sasuke's sharingan. And _the red of Sakura's back._

Deciding not to pester Sasuke for any more information, Naruto remained quietly by his side, cerulean eyes darting frequently to Sasuke as they made their way back.

Sasuke's shaking had stopped and he stared ahead with vacant black eyes. He was trained on a singular sight before him. The sight he hoped would anchor him, keep him awake and keep the nightmares from seeping into his visions. A crimson red back and a white circle in a sea of red like a signal flare in the pitch-black night.

He desperately wanted to trust in the blonde beside him and the owner of this red back to guide him home.

–

**07.  
**_(18 years old. 0.5 years after his return, Sasuke tries to end himself.)_

Sasuke's eyes were closed. The darkness behind his closed lids were comforting to his swollen sleep-deprived eyes but he does not let sleep claim him. Sleep was his worst enemy, the intangible enemy he had no chance of defeating but he fought anyway.

Uchiha Sasuke was fighting every day. He fought against his heart's unease, his mind's loneliness and…he fought to keep sleep from overpowering him. Sleep was like being imprisoned in Itachi's mangekyou sharingan again when he was 13. It transported him into the body of a young boy who only saw black and red. An 18-year old trapped in the useless shell of a frail coward as he watched his elder brother carried out the deed that scarred his clan.

The bright fluorescent light of the room surprised him. He tried to move but pins and needles crawling on his body prevented him from doing so. As he slowly relaxed into the stiff white bed, he realized an odd and comforting sensation warming his body, numbing the excesses of his heart. He had been heavily sedated, the narcotics were in his system and his breathing was finally steady. His eyes adjusted slowly to the light and his hearing was muffled but he discerned three distinct voices– Kakashi, Tsunade and Sakura.

He saw Sakura's back to him and it was no longer red. It was an empty _white_, drained off any color and feeling. Sasuke who used to find an uneasy solace in her red back could no longer stand the sight of it anymore. The smothering whiteness brimmed with jarring reminders of his own emptiness and exhaustion.

Sakura saw Sasuke's bloodshot eyes, dull pupils and darkening eye bags that marked him like an insomniac and a look of understanding passed her face. Sasuke knew that she knew. She had been by him those days he remained in bed, eyes closed but sleep far from his mind._ She knew._ She always did. Fatigued, drained and enervated, Sasuke's body was demanding sleep but the Uchiha fought against it, choosing instead to avoid sleep because of the nightmares waiting for him. He found temporal relief in the darkness that came when he squeezed his eyes shut but he lived in constant fear of sleep incapacitating him.

He was always tired and empty, _had he succumbed to madness so fast and so soon?_

Sakura reached forward tentatively to touch him, her hand felt nice and cool against his skin but Sasuke's instinct to swat it away was greater. The instinct to push her and that overwhelming whiteness away felt strong but his arm, numb from the narcotics, was unsteady. It swerved in her direction, shaking slightly and Sakura's eyes widened as she saw it lunging at her in her peripheral vision. She jerked backwards in a fast and awkward motion. The small basin of water she had on her lap fell noisily to the floor, leaving a puddle of water that dripped from Sakura's skirt.

"Sakura!" Kakashi rushed to Sakura's side protectively. Sasuke recognized the defensiveness and alertness in the copy ninja's posture. He had positioned himself before Sakura, shielding her with his body.

"Sasuke," Kakashi's eyes– one sharingan red, the other onyx– were trained on Sasuke. "What did you do?"

Tsunade walked towards the three calmly and muttered something Sasuke could not be bothered listening. He picked up Sakura's name in hushed tones and he saw the change in Kakashi's expression. As his former instructor stepped aside, Sasuke saw Sakura but not with her emerald eyes. Her hands screened them from his view and her knees were slightly bent as though they had buckled under the weight of something heavy. A wave of recognition flashed over Sasuke and he felt an odd sense of dejavu. Sasuke recognized her like_ this_. He had seen the exact same image before in the past. Sakura's frame had been small and fragile and her hair was long, reaching down to her waist. Sakura looked like she was bracing herself for an attack she was unprepared to defend herself from.

"Sakura, are you okay?" The blonde Godaime reached out to her apprentice.

As though realizing that three pairs of eyes were now trained on her, Sakura broke out of her rigid stance. She nodded nervously and smiled, in an attempt to wave off what had just happened.

"Shishou, it's nothing." She started sheepishly, her cheeks turning slightly red with embarrassment. "Sasuke-kun just…surprised me. That's all." She was beginning to regain her composure. The pink-haired medic picked up the fallen basin at her feet and placed it gently on Sasuke's table stand.

Tsunade's eyebrows were furrowed and her hazel eyes stared knowingly at Sakura, assessing the situation and the condition of her disciple. It took a few prolonged moments before things reverted back to before. Sakura patted her skirt dry and took her seat beside Sasuke. The room was silent except for the quiet voices of Kakashi and Tsunade, who were deep in conversation, Sasuke's steady breaths and the sound of water dripping as Sakura squeezed a cloth dry. Sakura had on a slight smile as she tugged at the cloth again to determine if it was wet enough.

But, Sasuke could pick up Sakura's trepidation. He could recognize fear even when it was hidden behind a camouflage of cool composure and fake smiles. Fear had long wormed its way through his ribcage and into his heart and Sasuke was certain he could sense its familiar presence even with his dulled senses and eyes closed.

Sakura was scared.

_(A startling blue light filled the room and Sasuke heard the shrill clamor of chidori, sparks of lighting had manifested themselves before Sakura and bright flecks of light danced across her pastel features, illuminating them with a deathly glow.)_

And he knew _why_.

_(Emerald eyes dilating in both surprise and fear, the strained scream that never got the chance to wrangle its way out of her pink lips and a blood red back which stared at him with an irritating defiance.)_

"I tried to kill you." _I wanted to kill you._ Sasuke wanted to say but his words were slow compared to Sakura's actions. Sakura was faster. He could tell how she avoided his gaze and maintained her distance. He was silenced. Her fingers dabbed at his eyes gently with a cloth. A crimson red was slowly staining the white cloth and Sakura dabbed at Sasuke's cheeks until the cloth was soaked with his blood. The sight of it had broken whatever resolve Sakura tried to muster, a tiny tremble escaping her steel composure. The fear that radiated off her was something that resonated in his being. He was silenced because he could smell blood. A metallic pungency that made his stomach churned nauseously.

Sakura instinctively handed a brown bag over. Sasuke forced himself to puke, to throw up whatever it was that gnawing at him but the brown bag remained disgustingly empty. He coughed hard, retching but there was only saliva and a sick taste in his mouth.

_Drip. _He noticed the lone drop of blood on the brown bag and realized his cheeks were dampening with bloodied streaks. That realization elicits an emotion that he often ricocheted between emptiness.

_Fear. _

It was as though he had been crying hard, staining his cheeks with them, bloody ribbons marking a bloodied pathway across his face. Like his body had long been depleted of tears and chose to replace it with another liquid that he possessed an abundance of– _blood_.

Sakura was talking to him in anxious tones but he does not register it. He only hears one word. It is all his ears picked up. _Unstable_. Tsunade and Kakashi had repeated the same word again in their conversation.

Uchiha Sasuke was unstable.

Everybody knew that.

_I know that_. Sasuke thought with a wry smile.

"I don't know whether he was trying to kill himself." Kakashi's voice seemed louder and clearer to Sasuke now. The narcotics were wearing away and his senses were sharpening again. When the copy ninja noticed Sasuke listening in, he paused midway, agitating Sasuke even more.

"Don't hide it from me." Sasuke spoke before a series of coughs assaulted him. His voice was hoarse, dry and unrecognizable. He had not spoken properly in the past few months.

Sakura offered him a glass of water. From the side of his eyes, he could see how hard she was holding onto the cup. It looked fragile curled in her fingers, as though it was on the verge of breaking under her ferocious grip. An image flashed before Sasuke's mind. The sensation of apples crushed underneath the soles of his feet and Sakura's worried expression. But he ignored her like he ignored the plate of freshly sliced apples that appeared daily on his tableside. Sasuke swallowed hard, forcing his saliva to mingle with his dry throat.

"Sasuke," Tsunade called out to him fiercely. She was walking towards him and her hazel glare was fierce and unflinching. "Were you trying to kill yourself?"

Sasuke shrugged.

Kakashi and Sakura exchanged silent glances across the room and Sasuke stared straight ahead, the narcotics were slowly disappearing from his system but he could still feel a slight numbness that was freezing the wildfire of emotions that churned in him constantly. He wanted to stay in this calmness and tranquility for a while longer before his demons and ghosts clawed at him again.

"Sasuke, you're suffering from a severe case of PTSD." Tsunade took a seat on the chair positioned by Sasuke's bed. "The curse of hatred that runs along the Uchiha line is only intensifying it. Your delusions, your anxiety attacks, your urge to kill yourself and your violent mood swings…do you notice it?"

But Sasuke was not listening, he was about to close his eyes again but Sakura's shrill voice forced him to keep them open.

"Sasuke-kun, listen to what it is we have to say." The gentleness from her voice was gone. The glass cup she held onto was gone too. She was gripping onto his hand tightly and he thought, a little tighter and she might just crush his bones. And Sasuke played around with the thought that, his arm was the glass cup now, fragile in her arms, ready to break under any pressure. He was the glass cup now, half filled with water, his mental instability must have so transparent and telling to the trio who stared at him with analytical eyes and...like glass, he might break. He would break if he fell.

_(Sasuke had reflected upon this exact moment a few months later alone in his room after Sakura had left and the realization of how much strength it must have taken Sakura to grab hold of him like this without recoiling had dawned on him like harsh sunlight entering a dank and dark room. He had tried to kill her with a chidori poised to her back and she had attempted to drive a poisoned kunai into his chest. Every moment where they are physically close is an echo of those treacherous actions.)_

Sasuke turned to look at her apathetically but the clear liquid falling from her eyes evoked a reaction and his expression changed. He recalled tears shed as an orphaned child. He burned with jealousy at the tears falling freely from Sakura's eyes. _Envy_. Another emotion. He wished he could cry. He wished the tears that had dried up in him would water again.

His body had forgotten how to cry but it had not given up on its desire for sleep. Every night, it begged him for sleep to take over. Pleaded with him over dizzying thoughts and unreal visions. Sasuke did not want sleep. He wanted his body to cry, to feel and to try to overcome its grief. He wanted salty tears not blood stains. Maybe if he cried enough, he would fall into a dreamless sleep that would grant him the rest he so desired. Tears were preferable to the heaviness of his heart, an invisible weight he could not lift but wished he could slowly shave off with tears. It would be better if he cried after his nightmares and found his long awaited catharsis. Sasuke wanted to be released. But, when he tried to cry, only blood spilled.

"At present, we do not know why it is that blood is coming from your eyes but we believe it has something to do with your sharingan and trauma. Still, the confusing fact of the matter is that those chakra bands you are wearing should restrict any use of chakra and in your case, restrict the sharingan too. But, we will monitor your case closely."

These were already things that Sasuke knew. He closed his pained eyes again and the sight of Sakura's tearstained cheeks disappeared into blackness. A while back, he had fought in battle with proud red eyes and now he was rusting away, fighting an enemy inside of him and his eyes were black and bloodied. He was slipping.

"I think you should stay in the hospital for the time being. You were better here in your first few months back from the war when you stayed to recover from your injuries." Tsunade continued. _"I should've known better than to send you back to your house." _A sigh escaped her lips and the Godaime massaged her temples as though trying to soothe a headache.

"Send me back with some painkillers. It won't make a difference." Sasuke said in an afflicted tone.

He remembered lasting three days without sleep. If he could last a little longer, maybe the natural sleep that would overcome him would be a dreamless one, just a dark comfortable abyss that allowed him some pleasant rest. He was not going to stay in this hospital. He did not want Sakura with her sad crying eyes and trembling hands, Tsunade's prodding or Kakashi's tired voice…he just wanted to be alone.

"You slashed your wrists into bloody ribbons and your whole bed is a mess of red." Kakashi argued.

Sasuke instinctively opened his eyes and glanced at his wrists. Only a faint trace of scars remained. He imagined feathery touches on his bloodied wrists, green chakra closing the ruined skin and stopping the gushing blood. He wished the same healing touch could stop the blood spilling from his eyes.

_(Sakura had tried once, her eyes closed in concentration and her fingers placed gently on his eyes and he felt the comforting sensation of chakra dancing against his eyelids. She had channeled her chakra, in every possible way and technique she had learnt and memorized but when her fingers came into contact with a sticky liquid, too thick to be tears, she knew she had failed Sasuke again.)_

"I'd be fine." Sasuke insisted and Tsunade sighed once more.

"Sauske, I don't think I need to tell you that if anything else happens, you will be made to stay in the hospital permanently." She warned.

_There won't be a next time_, Sasuke thought.

A week crawled by slowly with Sasuke battling sleep day after day. He lasted four days without it before collapsing on his bedroom floor and then an hour later, jolting awake in his own bed with Sakura's fingers clamped across his eyes, her voice urging him to remain still but her healing chakra did nothing to chase those nightmares away.

Naruto and Sakura visited him almost every day. The sight of Sakura's red back against the window, Kakashi slouched against the chair staring at him with tired eyes and Naruto's incandescent blue eyes and unnerving optimism were the few things he really remembered apart from the nightmares. If Sakura was not by his side, attempting to channel more of her chakra on his eyes, she usually stood by the window like a forlorn widow who ached from loss. Sasuke was uncertain if she had been mourning or crying but when he finally had the chance to see her eyes, he saw that they were bloodshot and dull, mirroring like his own. They were both fighting a tireless battle against sleep for different reasons.

Sakura and him occasionally had moments alone when Naruto was away. She always had books with her. Thick dusty books with scientific and medicial-related titles like psychotherapy psychology and trauma– he picked out a few words out of boredom. Sasuke and Sakura often shared silence. A silence sometimes interrupted by her careful and tentative actions, by her discomfort at exposing her back freely to him but mostly he also recalled how she poured herself over thick books and manuals, busying herself with trying to heal his bloodied tears and...silently peeling apples neatly and precisely. Sasuke wished she would turn over instead so he can see her red back instead of her watering eyes and shaking hands. But she doesn't. Not when she has done it before and he had responded with a flash of lightning meant to fry her heart.

The nightmares continued to haunt him but Sasuke quietly took it in, swallowed it like the pills he took religiously every night. He knew the painkillers were nothing but it had become a habit now and he grew anxious without it.

On a Monday night, exactly two weeks after his earlier hospitalization, Sasuke's ears picked up chatter and giggles, soft hushed voices and louder ones. It was almost like there were people near him but he knew, even in his beleaguered state, that there was _no one_ except Kakashi and the ANBU squad permanently stationed outside his room. He picked himself off the bed, hoping cold water would help exorcise those ghosts but the sight of his mother's dead body at his feet stopped him in his tracks, like a lingering phantom.

Sasuke smelt blood, the same blood that gathered in pools beneath his mother's cold corpse. The nervous thuds of his heart resonated loudly in his ears and his vision grew distorted. He remembered Sakura talking to him about anxiety and panic attacks, reciting from the thick book she had placed on her lap.

"Tunnel vision, where everything you see becomes–"

He was experiencing tunnel vision now. Everything was dissolving into darkness except for a faint circle that holed in on his mother's corpse.

Sasuke felt Kakashi's gloved hand gripping him but he was hyperventilating, gasping for oxygen. His hands tried to reach out for Kakashi but his palms were a sweaty mess. He felt himself melting like wax under a hot flame. His mind blazed like hell and his body felt ready to give up.

Sasuke screamed at Kakashi to stop him, to get rid of his mother, the corpse that was staring at him and– he begged for death. He asked Kakashi to end him.

Haunted by the ghosts of his family, racked by nightmares that contaminated his vision even while he was awake, Sasuke yearned for the peace and unnerving blackness that came with death. He had fulfilled everything he initially set out to do and there was no place for anymore regrets. No more dead corpses piled at his feet again. The Uchiha had an inkling that he was finally selling himself to the idea of spending an eternity in a forgotten Tartarus, wrapped in the black flames of his amaterasu.

_Madness_, he recalled Obito's words. He pleaded with Kakashi to strike him with the chidori.

"Do it!" He screamed, in ragged breaths and pants. _Please kill those ghosts._

Sasuke was frantic and desperate. The voice that left his mouth was one that even he did not recognize. _The voice of a mad man_. Kakashi restrained him and Sasuke struggled and kicked, he fought even harder when he saw Sakura's back before him. She was wearing that sickening white coat and her back was white, empty and barren. It felt like everything inside of him was trickling out, he was slowly hollowing out. Deep within him, something kicked in. He knew it was his own survival instinct but he battled it, he was not going to let his body win against Death this time round.

Emerald eyes stared at his madness with an intensity that shook him. Sasuke felt Sakura's hand and was distracted by the feeling of it, the only real sensation in his downward spiral to madness. Then, something punctured his skin and the white of Sakura's back consumed his entire vision. White like his hospital bed, like the cloth she had used to dap persistently at his stained cheeks and like her coat.

A pink-haired girl clutched desperately to the husk of a broken boy. She wished they were still twelve and at the Forest of Death again. She wished she had saved him from his demons then. There were tears in her eyes and a series of words she repeated to herself.

Kakashi silently stared at the scene before him, there was something disturbingly and achingly familiar about Sakura and Sasuke like _this_ before him, a crying girl and a dying boy, tears, blood and screams between them, and he felt a dull ache piercing his heart. _Please don't let the past repeat itself again._ He closed his eyes and looked away, he did not want Sakura to notice the tears that welled up in his own eyes.

Sakura held onto Sasuke's cold hands. _Don't die. Don't die. Don't die. Don't die on me._

–

**08.** **  
**_(19 years old, 1.5 years after his return, Sasuke embraces Sakura very, very tightly.)_

Sai and Naruto strolled alongside Sasuke, they were accompanying the Uchiha to his usual checkup with Tsunade at the hospital. It had been almost a year since…he had tried to kill himself and Sasuke was…_better_. Naruto had just used the word to describe him. Sasuke's eye bags were slowly disappearing and sleep was beginning to once again feel like a natural process. His nightmares plagued him every now and then, although not with the same frequency it did when he first returned to Konoha. Sakura had tried to help him cope with it, drawing on techniques she had learnt from her books and other medical ninjas. The painkillers he downed daily also provided him with an antidote of sorts when dealing with his own poisonous feelings.

The sun was high in the sky and Sasuke, dressed in a dark long-sleeved sweater, felt himself sweating under its intense heat. His two companions had opted for more weather-appropriate attire.

"Where's Sakura?" Sasuke asked as he paused at the road by Sakura's house. The pink-haired medic usually joined them as they waited by that particular road.

"Oh, Sakura..." Naruto muttered absentmindedley, finally realizing the absence of the pink-haired medic who would usually be out of the house even before they arrived. He shrugged and turned to face Sai, hoping the artist had the answer to Sasuke's question.

"Ugly probably had hospital duty." Sai replied curtly and Sasuke's eyebrows narrowed. The Uchiha could not get used to Sai's derogatory nicknames for his friends, especially the one reserved for a certain pink-haired medic, although Sai had claimed it was a term of endearment.

"_Sakura_…" Sasuke started, emphasizing on her name. "…usually meets us here. We can wait." He continued. He preferred her around, more so when he was in the company of Sai and Naruto, two idiots who had a penchant for talking animatedly and loudly. Sakura's presence was a comfort to him. Kakashi, Naruto and Sakura had been there when he awoke ravaged from nightmares but Sakura had seen him through it all. Almost every minute of it. She had seen him angry and ready to die, with balled fists aimed towards her months ago and with bloody tears staining his cheeks, he had shared silences with her, uncomfortable silences thick with tension and the silences that lulled both of them into a sweet slumber. She had furiously tried to heal him with her own chakra until she collapsed exhausted and...Tsunade had finally deemed her to personally involved and took over as his doctor.

But, Sakura remained stubbornly. She was there when he needed someone to be quiet with and she was there when he needed someone to hold his hand without having to ask. Sasuke instigating any action towards Sakura, especially ones that were unexpected, were always met with a slight hesitance and discomfort, although it was hid cleverly beneath her selfless nature and bright smiles. Sasuke does not know when she will not recall chidori's glare everytime he extended his arm towards her without warning. He does not deserve her forgiveness but he yearned for it anyway.

Naruto and him were different in that aspect. Physical contact that brought each other to the brink of death had always been common, they were used to the blood and gore, the half-deaths and almost-deaths, it was a part of their routine. Naruto and Sasuke, the death-defying boys, Sasuke thinks they only defy death because they have Sakura. She had yanked them both from its clammy grip more times than he remembered.

Naruto had helped him regain back his lost stamina during their thrice weekly training sessions and...his former instructor, Kakashi had watched over him, like his own shadow, reassuring him that he was never alone...but Sakura was the one he remembered most throughout that ardous period of recovery. She had been there when he ached from trying to exorcize his own ghosts and demons. She tried to save him but later, decided that was not her responsibility but_ his_. That was not her burden to carry. So, she stayed as he tried day after day to save himself from his own penchant to give in to darkness. She was his safety net. If he fell too deep, her hand was always there.

In their later sessions, when Tsunade had finally allowed Sakura to assist with Sasuke again, they had both tried to make sense of Sasuke's future, making little plans that seemed temporal at first ("getting through the week", "eating Ichiraku Ramen with Naruto today", "taking a stroll around the shopping arcade") before they grew and evolved into bigger ones that were concrete and life-defining ("restore the Uchiha Police Force", "become a Chunin", "go on a mission again with Team 7", "restore his clan"). He recalled her handwriting in a lazy cursive script that teteered downwards with no apparent order. Her words, his goals, her handwriting were contained in a leatherbound notebook that had the Uchiha enblem painted roughly on the flipside. Sakura had offered a sheepish smile at her own handiwork but his silent acknowledgement and the continued presence of the book by his bedside spoke volumes of his appreciation. Her green chakra and soft healing touch were other things he brought to mind when he needed something to anchor and comfort him.

Naturally, Sasuke was the only one who did not realized his own fondness for Sakura. Naruto and Sai were both increasingly aware of it, moments between the two grew longer with time and Sasuke's comfortable slight-smiles in the presence of of the pink-haired medic were startling obvious signs. They complied with the Uchiha's statement without arguing, even if they both knew that Sakura was probably occupied at the hospital.

"Speaking of Sakura." Sai started, carefully referring to the pink-haired medic by her name. "She has this fake smile, Sasuke-kun. It is horrifying. If you see it, run." The artist remarked, a genuine look of terror crossed his face momentarily. A long time ago, Sai had been on the receiving end of Sakura's artificial smiles. Caught off guard by its sweetness, he saw stars after receiving one of Sakura's signature punches to the face.

"I've seen Sakura punch this lecher in a bar after smiling at him like an angel." Naruto recalled, thinking back to an incident two years ago. "He was harassing some girls seated at another table and Sakura took action. That geezer deserved it but man…it was _scaryyyyyyy_."

When Sakura did not show up after a long while (forty minutes to be exact), the three decided to move on. Funnily, they bumped into Sakura and Hinata mid-conversation while recounting Sakura's bar brawls. Naruto attempted to switch topics awkwardly, receiving an odd look from the pink-haired medic.

He fled to Hinata's side as Sakura tried to question the disturbing look on the blonde's face. Sai shrugged and Sasuke ignored the babbling fool who was trying to justify himself, in fear of agitating Sakura. Naruto soon excused himself with the dark-haired girl, heading towards the direction of Ichiraku Ramen and Sasuke remembered the idiot's complaints about trying to find some time to spend with Hinata before she was dispatched on her month-long mission. With the talkative blonde gone, Sai, Sasuke and Sakura lapsed into a predictable silence.

Sakura was scrambling for interesting topics to broach to Sasuke and Sai when a rowdy Chunin stumbled into her path, tripped on his own foot and slammed into her chest. Sasuke reacted quickly and violently but Sakura chided him, her hand extended to hold him back.

Sakura muttered a soft apology and excused the Chunin. She knew an apology from her was unwarranted but she apologized anyway, smelling the strong alcohol fumes emanating from the drunken man before her. His face was familiar to her and Sakura matched it to one of the younger ninjas who had participated in the same Chunin Exams she did many years ago, while she teamed up with Ino and Chouji. _Nezumi _was his name, if she was not wrong. He had failed back then but the gleaming green vest that hung proudly on his shoulder seemed to hint at his recent success.

The Chunin brushed Sakura's apology off and remained in her path. He was itching for a fight and Sakura, Sasuke and Sai were his new targets. In his inebriated state of mind, he did not realize that the Godaime's apprentice was not someone to be trifled with. _It was his loss_, Sai thought. They had a former S-Class missing ninja with them and…Haruno Sakura with her brutish strength.

"You're the Godaime's apprentice, aren't you? _Haruno Sakura_. I remember you from the Chunin exams. Your pink hair stands out too much. I never thought you'd go _this far_ for a girl." Nezumi stated much to Sakura's annoyance. He was referring to Sakura's recent recommendation to be promoted to jounin. Tsunade had refuted it, suggesting that Sakura could use more experience but word had spread fast among the Konoha ninjas. Sakura had been the first in her batch of ninjas to receive that recommendation, which made her skill and intelligence almost comparable to Neji, who had graduated a year above her and been promoted jounin long before.

"Excuse me, Nezumi, but, I don't think you should be questioning–" Sakura replied in a composed fashion, trying to keep her own agitation at bay. But, it grew even harder to maintain her cool when the drunken Chunin interrupted her midway.

"How can you associate yourself with this Uchiha trash? How can you support him? That trash killed people in the war. I was at war too. You healed me, didn't you? The war months ago…I know what his wretched clan did. Uchiha Itachi is a criminal and this traitor is the same. His family is nothing but a curse on Konoha." He rambled on drunkenly. Nezumi, who had tried to pick her up with a trite compliment about her pink hair during the Chunin exams no longer possessed the same fondness for pink-haired girls with prestigious titles…or Uchihas with violent histories and he had no qualms on hiding his ill-will.

Sakura was familiar with being underestimated. She was even used to it. Her feminine appearance often gave the impression that she was fragile and…weak. But, she never had to deal with virulent backlash on Sasuke, at least not targeted to her. The truth about the Uchiha clan had been released after the war and Sasuke's return. She had listened to it bitterly, furious at first that such crucial information had been made known to Kakashi and Naruto but deliberately hidden from her. There was no excuse for Kakashi and Naruto's behavior and they offered no justification either. Sakura had been focused also on the solemn looks and atmosphere that crossed over the villagers who had been listened attentively to her master's words. The Godaime had been the one making the annoucment, with Sasuke standing by her side and Naruto on the other.

Nezumi was rambling even more and Sakura felt herself fuming, growing increasingly enraged but she willed herself to remain silent. If she lost her cool now, in the middle of the shopping arcade, it would cause a huge scene, anger her master and tarnish Sasuke's reputation. She only hoped that none of Nezumi's scathing words had triggered any of Sasuke's anxieties or torrid emotions.

Assuming that he had silenced Sakura, Nezumi continued haughtily. "I can't respect someone who hangs around that Uchiha. Everyone pretends that they're okay with_ him _coming back, but the truth is that nobody wants to say how scared they are. He's a criminal and the Godaime should find a better apprentice." He finished with a proud spit on Sakura's boots.

Even Sai who usually had on a placid disposition, was starting to grow concerned. He eyed the pink-haired girl carefully and was surprised to see her remain calm and unflinching, modelling her demeanor over her own master's strict facade. Sasuke on the other hand was sizing the Chunin up, ready to engage. He had been provoked since the moment Itachi's name was mentioned. Sasuke pushed forward with the intention to punch the drunken scum but Sakura's voice stopped him.

"_Sasuke-kun."_ One word and he knew. She did not want him to engage with this man. But, _how could he not?_ This wayward bastard was berating his brother, trash talking his family and that was not something he could let go. He could not let Itachi's name be sullied like that. His brother had scarified everything for scum like him and in return, his name was being dragged across the mud.

Sasuke felt himself seethe with a rage that he had not experienced in the past few months. Memories of his brother and clan came back to him in flashes and it only made him more determined to kill the bastard before him. He wanted nothing more than for the drunkard to disappear in the black flames of his amaterasu. He wanted this bastard to pay. But Sasuke's sharingan does not appear and the Uchiha knew that his chakra bands held him hostage. Sai continued to restrain Sasuke but the Uchiha was growing increasingly agitated and the artist was struggling.

Sasuke's eyes focused on the white hospital coat that covered Sakura's back. She was blocking his view of that scum and she was holding him back with her chakra brands and her words. He despised how she viewed his anger as violence. All he wanted to do was protect the name of his family and brother.

"Sakura!" Sasuke yelled irritably but his words seemed to disappear in the whiteness of her back clothed in her coat.

Sasuke struggled against Sai, he was bent on aggression and retaliation. He could not watch Sakura let this scum go unscathed and unharmed. Sai's ink summons pressed down on the Uchiha even harder. The chakra bands on Sasuke's wrists were digging deeper into his wrists as he tried to force his own chakra out. If Sasuke could not use chakra, he could still land one hard punch. Anything that will leave the man's face bloodied and etch the sensation of pain into his consciousness.

When Sakura turned to face Sasuke, a saccharine smile graced her lips and crinkled her eyes. It was a pleasant smile that lit up her pretty features but Sai's adverse reaction to it foretold something hidden. Sasuke watched as the Chunin calmed down upon witnessing the girl's sweet smile.

Sasuke saw Sakura's feet moved, her back poised like she was turning back, _was she going to walk away…so simply?_

"_Sakura!"_ Sasuke shouted. His rage had poisoned her name from lightness and spring into something venomous, dark and malicious.

Sasuke could feel his urge to kill coming to him in waves and then– he saw Sakura's white coat catching wind as she lunged forward to punch the man. The force from the punch sends the guy flying.

"You bitch!" Nezumi clutched onto his bloodied nose. He lifted himself up with much effort and even if he was nowhere near her level, he threw a punch in Sakura's direction and the pink-haired medic allowed him. His hands smacked her cheek and the side of her lips.

"Sakura!" Sasuke's voice, loud, clear and concerned stung Sai's ears and his grip on the Uchiha loosened in surprise at the events that unfolded before him. The Uchiha took the opportunity to attempt an escape but was ultimately pinned down by an ink lion.

"Sasuke-kun, Sakura can take care of herself. _Just watch._" Sai whispered to the Uchiha who was far from appeased. He was still persistently atempting to break free, struggling to escape. Sasuke noted Sai's specific use of Sakura's name, instead of his usual derogative nickname for her and he knew that Sai was being deathly serious about Sakura. She was a force to be reckoned with and Sasuke _knew_.

The Uchiha trusted in Sakura's abilities and strength. He knew that she could crush the bastard in in mere seconds, she was _strong_. But, Sasuke could not possibly let her do this. He felt himself grow uneasy at the sight of Sakura's bruised lip and swelling cheek. Blood was trickling down her lip and it threatened to unleash a black wave of feelings he had fought so hard to suppress over the past months. Her blood was a trigger set on releasing his anxieties, fears, ghosts, demons, it was a trigger set on stripping him of his self-control. But, he resisted. He gritted his teeth and balled his fist, bringing to mind happier memories and happier times and his body ached for the numbness of the painkillers he drowned himself with but _Sakura_. He could not possibly let her take the hit for an attack meant for him.

The sight of Sakura's blood and burst lip made Nezumi cocky and he grinned smugly. "Women need to know their place in–"

Sakura lifted him effortlessly, her fingers surrounded his neck tightly in a chokehold.

The civilians from the nearby stores gathered after hearing the loud commotion, their faces expressing both shock and fear. There was endless chatter amongst them– most commonly of how the same sweet girl who had treated their illnesses diligently and frequented their stalls with a kind smile was now engaging in a public fight.

Sasuke watched Sakura's white coat the whole time that Sai had him restrained. The artist and his inked summons do not let him go, not even when another punch is directed again at Sakura from the struggling man and Sasuke retaliated fiercely against Sai. His body was rebelling against Sai and his natural instinct to protect Sakura was beginning to kick in, fuelled even more by the rage of having his brother and clan insulted.

The blank white of her coat contrasted against the blood that Sasuke saw dripping down onto the ground beneath her boots. The white of her coat only made her back seem larger and more foreboding. His vision blurred and he squeezed his eyes shut and reopened them again. Her pink hair, fair skin, green eyes and selfless demeanor had people fooled that she was delicate and dainty, that like her namesake, she was common and could be taken lightly.

The raw display of her brute strength was alarming to most of the civilians who never saw how the earth shook under her fist or how the same hands capable of healing and mending were also trained in stabbing with lethal precision. They only saw her gentle chakra, the calm green glow that shined when she healed. Sakura was a healer but she was also a destroyer.

"Don't you ever talk about the Uchihas like that _again_." Venom dripped from Sakura's words as she glared at the Chunin menacingly. Her eyes were emerald daggers trained on Nezumi who was paralyzed in fear.

Sakura dropped him roughly to the ground and placed the boot dirtied with his spit on his chest, restraining him. "I let you land one hit on me because it's only fair since I punched you. But, I am the Godaime's apprentice. You can trust that I will not let you go easily the next time I hear you trash talking or underestimating me again."

Sai felt the Uchiha finally ceased struggling. When he looked at Sasuke again, he noticed that the Uchiha's black eyes possessed a peculiar softness to them. His focus never strayed from the pink-haired medic. Sasuke's gentle eyes reminded him of emerald ones he had seen crying silently at Sasuke's bedside.

Nezumi was scrambling under Sakura's feet and he was now pleading with her to let him go but Sakura still had a few more words to say. The crowd gathered near them held their breaths in anticipation of something violent and cruel. But, Sakura was none of that.

"Itachi…" Sakura started and Sasuke grew alert at the sound of his brother's name.

"Itachi-_san_." She corrected herself. "He is a hero of Konoha. You do not disrespect heroes like that. Sasuke-kun is a hero too. I know that it does not change the fact that had done many bad things in the past–" There was a lump in her throat that prevented her from carrying on and Sasuke recognized her quivering lips.

When she spoke again, her voice cracked a little. Sakura always cried a little too easily.

"Sasuke-kun is atoning for his mistakes. You have my word as the Godaime's apprentice that he is. He is not trash so please don't ever insult my…" There was a slight pause between her words and Sai paid especially close attention now, he was certain that Sasuke was listening avidly too, although he feigned nonchalance. Sakura felt her cheeks reddening at the word that she had let slip out of her lips in her emotional state. _My…w_hat? My..._teammate?_ My…_Sasuke-kun?_ My…_love?_ My…_friend?_ My…?

"Don't insult _Sasuke-kun _like that." She finished and lifted her boot from Nezumi's chest. There was a certain emphasis in the way Sakura had referred to Sasuke, as though purposely highlighting his importance to her.

Sai knew how Sakura felt about Sasuke and in a little bit, he would learn and confirm Sasuke's affections for Sakura.

Sakura offered Nezumi her hand as a sign of goodwill but he brushed it aside and scoffed. He disappeared in a hurry.

"Phew. That was a real bother." Sakura commented, wiping off the beads of pespiration on her forehead. She turned to face the crowd of passersbys and smiled at them while attempting to disperse the crowd. They were still surrounding her in a wider circle, despite Sakura's pleas. She sighed and instead, turned to face Sai and Sasuke when something crashed into her. She looked down to identify the figure and recognized fists clutching tightly to the fabric of her blouse.

Sakura turned behind slowly in an attempt to ease the awkward position they were in. Sasuke had embraced her from the back, arms snaking around her and wrapping themselves across her chest. Her cheeks burned, his hands on her chest, his fingers so close to her nervous heart but she knows it was not intentional. Sasuke's action was hardly driven by lust but it was driven by a sense of urgency almost akin to it. An uncontrollable urge to have Sakura in his arms and to hold her close had taken over. His usual logical mind would have deduced embracing her from the back would have thrown them into an awkward almost-hug, it would have ended up looking suspiciously like he was attempting to grope her but…he had abandoned all those thoughts. He abandoned logic for the primal need to thank Sakura, in a way he was not familiar with, in a way that expressed more.

Sakura now faced him and her forehead was pressed against him and he felt the heat emitting from her skin, she was heating up, her cheeks were a bright shade of red. Sasuke could feel the curious stares of the passersby that had watched Sakura before. It does not bother him or stop him from pulling her in closer, _much closer_, he inhaled her scent, a mixture of sweat and the light floral scent of her namesake and he relished their proximity. His arms were crossed over her back, fingers rubbing against the fabric of her red blouse, the back he so loved and admired.

There was a time when the same proximity had frightened Sakura, triggering memories of a pained past, of a frightening memory, of a time where he had tried to end her and he knew that even now, Sakura was a little hesitant. Him charging at her back with a chidori had imprinted itself permanently in her mind, and when he inched close, it would always provoke a reaction and a string of a painful sentiments long past. Her body felt stiff for a moment but it eventually warmed into his embrace and he felt himself melting into her body. He was only slightly taller than Sakura and felt fortunate that his added height allowed Sakura to rest her head comfortably on his shoulders. Her breath brushed against his neck and it filled him with a chill so foreign…and surreal.

Two beings wrapped in each other– one had been a traitor to the village, a killer, a murderer and the sole survivor of a long gone clan and another– the Godaime's apprentice, well-loved by the village, family and her friends, never alone and never a traitor, they had came together in a way that seemed almost natural like metal falling helplessly under the attraction of a magnet or maybe…just maybe, they no longer needed any metaphors to describe their predictable union. Sasuke and Sakura, in each other's arms, in the middle of the shopping arcade, on a well-worn road, for the whole world to see, the gentle look on Sasuke's face, his comfort at having her so close and so _present_, and a flicker of fierce protectiveness in his dark eyes, and Sakura, with her eyes closed, cheeks flushed, eyebrows relaxed and her lips stretched in a natural smile. They both loved each other, without helping, without truly knowing and without warning.

Sai found himself smiling fondly at the intimate exchange between the two. _This was a more illustrative example than the ones his books showed. _When Sakura finally separated from Sasuke, the Uchiha instinctively sought out her hands, the same ones that had gripped onto his back…but he does not find them because Sakura had aimed her fist to his head, delivering a swift hard knock against the side of his head. There were only a few capable of engaging Sasuke in a fair fight. But there was only _one person_ that Sasuke subconsciously and completely lets his guard down around. Sasuke winced from the pain, not anticipating the hit from Sakura.

"Don't risk yourself like that. You are still under probation. It's 3 years and you still have some more to go. Aren't there things you want to do?" Her hands were poised on her hips angrily. He does not argue, only listen to the angry words of a girl who loved him.

"Don't you want to start up the Uchiha Police Force? What about rebuilding your clan? You can't do them if you get into a street fight. I won't let you waste more time making up for your probation over some irritating drunkard…" Sakura was rambling irritably, but beyond her annoyance, there was great care and love, she had shielded him with her own body again, punching the bastard on his behalf and...Sasuke felt warm, light, comfortable and happy– a strange medley of emotions that squeezed at his heart and chased away the usual scowl on his lips.

_"What about your future, Sasuke-kun?"_

Sasuke was silenced. His mind had gone completely blank in shock because here she was, standing before him, lovely, strong and as pink as ever. What knocked the breath right out of him was the fact that she was talking to him about _his future_. Goals he had confided in her privately, goals that she had encouraged him to take action towards and goals that he never considered before. His future before had been an image of blank whiteness, a symbol of nothingness and a space so devoid of anything but he was beginning to see how it was materializing now, in bright colors, in real smells, sounds and sights, it was materializing behind Sakura.

Sasuke took Sakura in his arms again. He does not have words anymore, only_ this_, only his hands embracing her tightly and pulling her so so_ so_ close against him, as though he was trying to close the invisible distance that had accumulated between them in those lost years of his past and he needed a way to show Sakura how much she meant to him. This feeling of wanting someone close and of wanting Sakura close is…entirely new to him but he trusted in his intuition and in Sakura's tears.

Sakura opened her lips. There was something she had been waiting to say to Sasuke for years._ For so long. _They were words meant only for his ears but her voice so loud and confident was easily heard by Sai who stood a fair bit behind them.

"Welcome home, Sasuke-kun."

Sasuke does not ease his hold on Sakura even after the crowd dispersed and long minutes passed between the two. _"Sakura."_ He called out to her, burying his face into her shoulders, her spiky pink hair tickling his skin. His lips are pressed against the hollows of her neck but it was not quite a kiss. Sasuke does not think it constituted as a kiss, not when it was not his lips againsts hers. "_Tadaima._" He whispered the words to her skin, to her ears, to her.

Sakura's heart lurched and Sasuke felt her fingernail sink deep into his back and tears wetting his shirt.

–

**08½.**  
_(19 years old Sasuke and Sakura, three moments after the eighth instance.)_

Later on, Sasuke took a detour on his route to the hospital and stopped by the river, forcing Sakura to kneel beside it. He retrieved a napkin from his pocket, wetting it with the water from the river and washed Sakura's boot, scrubbing at it forcefully, hoping to remove whatever traces of the spit that bastard had gotten on Sakura's shoe. Sakura ended up keeping the napkin, choosing not to return the beautiful blue cloth with a small Uchiha fan sewn on the top and Sasuke never asked. Sai followed them throughout, quietly observing the pair, until Sakura took his hand and Sasuke's hand and they rushed towards the hospital because Sasuke was an hour late to his appointment with her master and she knew how strict Tsunade-sama was with punctuality.

A day later, Sasuke dropped by the ninja store, with terrible instructions from Naruto as he attempted to purchase a new pair of boots for Sakura. Shiny black thigh-high combat boots. It was not choosing the style or size that got to Sasuke. Sasuke was perfect with measurements and he already had the mould of Sakura's feet imprinted in his mind. He had deduced her shoe size when when he had scrubbed her boot yesterday by the river. What proved difficult was ringing up his purchase at the counter and realizing that Sakura's mother was the one serving him. He recognized her mother from distant photographs but more obvious were her green eyes, that were the exact same shade as Sakura's. It did not take long for Haruno Mebuki to figure Sasuke's intentions. It was not everyday someone strolled in to buy a pair of female combat boots, exactly in the style favored by her daughter and exactly in her daughter's size.

Somewhat later on, _two nights later_ to be precise, Sai made a joke when the Rookie Nine and Gai's team had gathered around for a barbeque. There was a makeshift pit on the training grounds and stacks of frozen food loomed over them, courtesy of Chouji, Shikamaru and Ino, who were the resident barbeque experts.

Under the stars and influence of sake as the smell of food filled the air, Sai joked, "Sasuke-kun's entire dictionary is composed of two words– _hn_ and _Sakura_."

Ino grinned knowingly, nudging her best friend who looked up curiousl from her overflowing plate of food, courtesy of Sasuke, her cheeks turning bright red. Kakashi smiled fondly at Sai's joke, because he knew what the artist was elucidating. Naruto nodded his head furiously in agreement, referencing all their previous reunions, where Sakura's name and Sasuke's lips seemed to have form an uncanny connection with each other...and _Sasuke?_ His eyes sought for Sakura in the crowd of laughing ninjas and smiling faces and they both shared a quiet moment of acknowledgement, of silent smiles and of tenderness. Sakura was fiddling with the buckles of her new boots. Ino had laughed at the trite gift, citing Cinderella's glass slipper, and giggled herself breathless at the thought that Uchiha Sasuke may very well be a _romantic_. Later on, the Uchiha prepared a brimming plate of food for Sai, it was his way of acknowledging the artist and his _brilliant_ joke.

– to be continued –

–

**Notes: EDITED, added some details (slightly more hints to Sasuke's mental conditions) and an extra moment for the last instance because I could not resist. **Phew, that was_ long_. Thank you for reading this chapter in its entirety! You have my unabashed love. I just knew I couldn't end on two instances this chapter since it would be on a quite depressing note again. Special thanks to Jac, xHeartofBlazexX, KARASU25 and Chantrea Moonbeam for your constant reviews and also to my other reviewers, to those who favourited or followed this story, I thank you from the bottom of my heart! It's been a great challenge but a really enjoyable one at that. Fun fact, I think Nezumi should be a variant of rat in Japanese, haha, it's kind of symbolic of how he's such a rodent.

There's also this...recurring theme that's a favorite of mine when dealing with Sasuke's mental state– _"kill your ghosts". F_or those of you who haven't read my earlier one-shot entitled after that, I always go back to that line and this particular theme. It's my favorite...theme to use with Sasuke so far, and I may have used it a little too excessively, oops.

The next _(final)_ chapter should be up within a week or so, some major editing had to be done but do look out for it! I will likely be going a little into detail about Sasuke's recovery process after his bad breakdown in the next chapter for those of you who are a little more curious. _Arigato gozaimasu!_


	4. The ninth and the last

**Decennial  
**_adj.__**  
**_Relating to or lasting for ten years.

_–_

"When a man learns to love, he must bear the risk of hatred."

_–_

**Chapter Four**

_–_  
**  
****09.  
**_(19 years old. Five months after the 8__th__ instance. Sasuke falls into something deep and dark.)_

**July 20**

"Sasuke," Tsunade called out to the Uchiha seated before her. "Since your condition had drastically improved over the past year, I am going to have you stop taking Xanax. It's something Sakura and I have discussed." The Godaime turned to face her pink-haired apprentice who had her hand clasped over Sasuke's protectively.

"I understand that you have taken Xanax for only a year after your prescription of painkillers was replaced but we thought it would be best to see how your condition would fare without medication."

Sasuke nodded in response. There was nothing implicitly wrong with what Tsunade was proposing and he felt no need to argue. Even Sakura had consented to it. He had little worry that the absence of his usual dosages would cause any impediments.

Close to a year before, they had stopped his prescription of painkillers, opting for the more suitable Xanax instead. He remembered the weeks following his transition from painkillers to Xanax in a blurry haze– the restlessness during daytime, an inability to fall asleep even while his eyes ached from exhaustion and his rough thrashing against the bed when bouts of anxiety overwhelmed him. But, when his body eventually came around, overcoming the transition, Sasuke felt himself melt like warm liquid trickling down a long smooth passageway. A lasting sense of tranquil warmth had surrounded him with the onset of Xanax, like ghost fingers smoothing the dead knots in the thread of his thoughts, slowly disentangling from his heart.

The advent of medicine was still something fairly new in the world of medical ninjutsu, even with its extensive history. Most of medical ninjutsu had relied on chakra. There was simply no need for much medication, especially if medical ninjutsu could immediately and efficiently erase the problem. In Konoha, the pills they possessed were commonly created using crushed herbs gathered from the forest. A different form of medicine, made from various chemical compounds, was discovered by Shizune and Sakura on their research abroad, in a technologically advanced village, estranged from the ninja world and even overlooked, due to its location in the outskirts of the Fire Village, obscured by the forests that surrounded it.

With little mastery of the chakra system, the doctors there had relied on their intellect, creating pills and medication and using them as a means of curing ailments. They created chemical compounds, new things completely unheard of by Sakura, whose main focus had always been on the anatomical and biological functions of the human body. In exchange for healing most of their sick villagers, the head doctor had shared with them whatever knowledge their small village had possessed about medicine. News of the village eventually reached Tsunade's ears upon Shizune and Sakura's return. Money was transferred to the village, in hopes of advancing their medical studies but also to make up for the years of neglect and isolation the small village had kept up with.

Books and manuals Sakura had purchased from the doctor were lugged back and studiously poured over. Amongst them was a mystery drug of sorts that could help alleviate even the worst of pains. _Painkillers._ Sakura had attentively studied its compounds to understand more but with her limited resources and knowledge, there was nothing new she had gleaned beyond what the doctor had discussed with her.

Administering the painkillers to Sasuke in his traumatic state seemed like a risky experiment that Tsunade had taken a gamble with. After all, there were no results without risks. The painkillers soothed Sasuke's trauma in a way that Sakura's chakra could never endeavor to, they reached deep into mottled black eyes aching with longing, extended to the crevices of his mind, beyond areas even her fine fingers could not reach.

Sakura was accustomed to alleviating pain with chakra. It was unfamiliar to see a tiny pill do the same work more effectively than she did. But, Sasuke's pain was not physical. The painkillers had provided temporal relief to the Uchiha who fed off the momentary numbness it provided him. But, his pain had been psychological. It was an intangible and unidentifiable scar on his mind. His pain had manifested itself in spasms, shallow breathing and hollow screams. This was not a broken ankle or arm. Not something that Sakura could heal and painkillers could take away. The painkillers were not the lasting solution Sakura had hoped for.

Weeks later, in her desperation, Sakura had consulted the same doctor from the village about Sasuke's trauma– his panic attacks, the increasing anxiety and striking hallucinations that plagued the boy. The doctor had introduced her to Alprazolam_,_ better known as _Xanax_– a catchy name that had rolled off Sakura's tongue easily. It was an experimental pill capable of sedating patients with anxiety and/or panic disorders by subduing the waves of anxiety and panic that assaulted patients.

Once she had attained all the information available on Xanax– stacks of files with typewritten information courtesy of the doctor– Sakura proposed a change in Sasuke's medication. It was a decision largely fuelled by impulse and by intuition, a feeling that she had when she looked at the tiny tablet that seemed to present itself as the only tangible solution to Sasuke's intangible ailments. Sakura had fought for her decision to be approved. Tsunade remained unflinchingly stubborn at first, in fear of unknown hazards that came with investing in an experimental cure from an unknown village. But, Sakura's confidence had swayed her. The conviction that gleamed from her emerald eyes reminded Tsunade of her own ones many years in the past, when she had presented the idea of training medical ninjas and enforcing one to each squad. It had been a controversial idea back in her age but it had paid off.

Sakura had spoken with a fearless confidence, one she had never expected herself to possess. But, her determination to administer Xanax to Sasuke had been undettered, like the stony resolve she consciously maintained. Xanax had been the solution that she silently prayed for. Sakura had spent months berating herself silently for being so useless in Sasuke's recovery. She could only offer petty words and the comfort of her overused hands. Her medical ninjutsu, so renowned and famed, had been useless against the fight for Sasuke's mind and sanity. The medicine, white powder compressed in the shape of a pill, it laid innocently in her palm. It could help exorcise Sasuke's ghosts. It could help him regain his peace of mind. If Sasuke's mind allowed him rest then his hallucinations would slowly cease.

Sakura knew that it was not her responsibility to save him but in spite of everything– the odds, the risks and her own articulation that Sasuke should save himself– Haruno Sakura desired to be the one person that saved Uchiha Sasuke. She had naturally wanted to save the person she loved.

But now, the same conviction was starting to chip away and Sakura felt herself growing a little fearful. The months he had spent taking Xanax in varying dosages– some months higher, other months lower– were coming to an unceremonious end and Sakura's intuition was screaming at her again, like it had nights ago when Sasuke was ready to leave and no one could feel it but_ her_. Her intuition set off warning bells in her mind. A _premonition_.

The past couple months had seen Sasuke's gradual recovery. Naruto even believed his best friend to be fully recovered although Sakura knew too much to confidently proclaim the same statement. She needed to gauge if Sasuke had developed an unhealthy physical dependence on Xanax. She needed to know that her decision had benefitted him and that he would not live, desperately reliant on this small capsule to save him. Cutting him of his dosages completely would offer her the answers she had vied for.

"You will take your last dosage_ tonight_ and we will observe your condition again a week after." Tsunade continued, scribbling some notes hastily, "Sakura would, _of course_, be monitoring you closely. With or without my orders, it seems."

In response to that comment, Sakura's cheeks flared and her grip on Sasuke's slackened. She was finally conscious of how hard she was holding his hand, she was squeezing his fists almost to the point of pain– as though her hand was the glue that was holding his breaking mechanism together. When in actuality, the sheer pressure she was exerting could very well be the one thing breaking him _literally_.

"You heard that, Sakura? Look out for Sasuke." Tsunade repeated again, when she heard no reply from her apprentice.

"Okay, shishou." Sakura croaked out, a sheepish smile playing on her lips.

Sasuke seemed to sense her discomfort and attempted to reassure her in his own quiet actions. He took her hands, tightening the grip that was loosened before. It was meant to encourage her and to chase away the doubts forming in her mind. He had faith and confidence in her– not just in her abilities as a doctor, as a medical ninja, but also as Sakura, someone who always had his best in mind, even when she had a poisoned kunai aimed to his heart.

_But_–

If Sasuke really considered how uncanny Sakura's intuition was…then, he might not have been so flippant about her nagging worries. He might not have been so quick to dismiss them and agree obediently with Tsunade's statement without so much as an argument.

Sasuke had rough adjustments before. Transitioning from heavy dosages of painkillers to lightweight Xanax had been no easy feat. Adapting from a noisy compound to a painfully empty house had broken his sanity. Still, the journey before him was one that was unattested and largely painful. If he had some knowledge and sense of that, he might not have been so arrogant into thinking that he was _this close_ to the finishing line. He boldly thought that his recovery was nearing its end– that he was going to finally be rid of his chakra bands holding him prisoner and the intoxicating smell of medicine lingering in his bedroom.

He wanted to believe that he was _this _close to being back to himself and shedding off the "_patient"_ part of his identity.

But, in actuality, Uchiha Sasuke was _this_ close to falling, teetering off the ledge and his arrogance may just be the last push.

_There were no results without risks._

**July 21**_, the morning after his last dosage, eight hours ago,_ **9.30AM**

Sasuke was in the middle of preparing himself and Kakashi some tea when he felt a piercing pain seized him. The glass slid from Sasuke's grip, falling onto the floor and breaking into many shards across the kitchen floor. The glaring sunlight that peeked from the gaps in his curtains only served to intensify the pain, the bright vision hurting his eyes more than it normally would. He squeezed his eyes shut and hunched over the counter, fingers kneading his forehead in trying to soothe the pounding pain.

Kakashi arrived a few moments later in the kitchen. The sound of breaking glass had provoked him from his drunken stupor. He had been nursing a hangover from last night's heavy drinking when he his instincts had forced him into a dash. The smell of tea wafted through the kitchen, a comforting smell that reminded Kakashi of quiet mornings with his former student. But, today was different. Kakashi's eyes came into contact with Sasuke's frame, bent over, his knuckles turning white from gripping the counter and he rushed to the Uchiha's side, struggling to discern the situation. When Sasuke remained quiet, wincing from the acute pain pricking at his mind, Kakashi busied himself with searching for Sasuke's medication– the white tablets that he swallowed diligently every morning in the past.

He knew that Sasuke was recently advised to stop his dosage but his first instinct had always been, _before anything else_, to sedate Sasuke, as per Sakura's instruction, in fear of the broken boy harming himself again. A quick run through the kitchen and Sasuke's bedroom turned up empty. As Sasuke released his agonizing grip on the counter, his fingers now sore and aching, he slowly made his way to a chair with Kakashi's help. His eyes remained closed and his feet hurt from grazing the glass shards strewn across the floor.

The copy ninja silently picked up the glass shards, his eyes focused on his former student. Sasuke's long fingers were positioned on his temples, massaging them roughly. Kakashi hypothesized that Sasuke's cause of agony was a splitting headache. He walked up and drew the curtains, permitting the kitchen to a cool darkness, hoping that would relieve Sasuke of some of his pain. A few long moments passed between the two until Sasuke's eyes flickered open. He released a shaky breath, looking visibly traumatized. Kakashi pretended not to see the tears that had gathered in his student's eyes. He knew that Sasuke had enough pride as it was to let anyone see him in any state of weakness.

_This was no ordinary headache_, Kakashi thought, making a mental note to relay the details to Sakura. But, her intuition was faster and sharper than most. The sound of knuckles rapping against the front door filled the house and Kakashi allowed himself a grin, in spite of the situation.

**11.00AM**

After Sasuke's excruciating headache and Sakura's timely presence with neat bento sets of breakfast ready for Sasuke (still sore and dazed from his headache) and Kakashi (tired from his hangover), the three of them fell silent in the darkness of Sasuke's kitchen. Kakashi was fighting to stay awake and Sasuke was fighting to stay cool under Sakura's concerned and analytical stare.

In an attempt to push sleep further from his mind, Kakashi struck a conversation. "Sakura, your cooking has improved a lot…since the last time." He teased the pink-haired girl whose eyes were glued on Sasuke, after hearing a recount from Kakashi on what happened earlier in the morning.

"It was my mum who cooked it." Sakura replied irritably, resisting the urge to punch Kakashi. Her determined eyes never left Sasuke's, as though a slight break in contact would mean a break elsewhere, a rift between two people whose proximity was often confused with distance and distance with proximity.

"Well, and here I thought, you were beginning to…" Kakashi spoke but was interjected by Sasuke who was beginning to squirm under Sakura's prolonged and increasingly intense gaze.

"Sakura." His voice was a low menacing drawl and he eyed the pink-haired girl whose emerald eyes were still on his. Their eyes locked.

When Kakashi had left earlier to answer the door, Sasuke had waited impatiently in his seat, anticipating her arrival, knowing that it was either her or the blonde idiot who would make house calls on him in the morning. But, for some reason, he had wanted it to be _Sakura_. His headache had left him gasping and exhausted, in need of a comforting sight and he had instinctively remembered the way being in her arms felt– pulling her close, _so_ close that he could feel her raspy breath tease the nape of his neck. He wanted to be wrapped in such softness again but he dared not touch her now.

His eyes had followed Sakura as she strolled in, brown paper bags in hand, her pink hair loose from its usual tight ponytail and her back was a beautiful sea blue that reminded him of the ocean. It was an uncommon color for Sakura, whose wardrobe he assumed had consisted of varying hues of red. Watching her back as she slowly uncovered the contents of her paper bags had calmed him into the grey area between sleep and awake. He felt like he was on the verge of falling into a comfortable sleep, the sharp bursts of pain he experienced before seemed like the stuff of nightmares long past and long gone.

_Until_, she sat on the chair opposite of him and Kakashi recounted to her the events of the morning. She soon spent the entire duration of breakfast staring at him, taking in every gradation of his skin, emerald eyes sharp and penetrating, like needles prodding and jabbing him in a cold operating room. But, he also spotted _concern_ in her eyes, the same brand of unwavering concern he commonly sought for in Sakura's eyes, a concern he knew that was privately reserved for him. Still, it felt disconcerting to have Sakura stare at him like this. It made him self-conscious, a state he thought he had long outgrown with puberty.

_What was she trying to find? Some trickle of madness, some form of disturbance?_ It made him grew anxious with worry, his heart starting to race.

"Yes, Sasuke-kun?" Her eyes were still on him.

"Stop staring." His eyes were on her.

"I'm not staring. I'm just looking." She argued, refusing to break eye contact with him. She knew her argument was a weak one that only agitated Sasuke further, the irritated sigh escaping from his lips was proof of that. She waited for his retort silently and when he said nothing, she finally spoke of words she was terrified to admit. "I'm worried about you. To be honest, _I'm scared._"

To Uzumaki Naruto, his best friend, Uchiha Sasuke was as good as recovered. Kakashi seemed to regard him in a similar way, only showing additional signs of concern on days when Sasuke's mental state seemed to sway and things went breaking. Of all the people he seemed to value – now only down to a pathetic _three_ – only Haruno Sakura seemed to possess some inkling that he was _not okay_, not just yet. Her intuition was strong and he dared not challenge it. The same intuition had led her waiting for him on the cold night he had decided to leave. He had told no one and left no signs. But, she had heard, she had picked up the slight shift of his heart as he moved on, away from Team 7 and away from her.

Another eleven hours later, Sasuke _fell_.

Into an abyss he thought he had overcome.

Into a darkness characterized by numbness, throbbing headaches and the violent shifts of emotions.

_More demons to fight._

**3.00PM**

Sasuke awoke to Naruto's snores, the only noise in a room that was painfully silent. Kakashi had left before his nap to get some rest. Naruto had dropped by a little after breakfast and fell asleep in Sasuke's cold bedroom, wrapped in a blanket that Sasuke was sure Sakura had thoughtfully placed on the boy's sleeping figure. He saw Sakura's back standing by the window. She had positioned herself against the only gap in his curtain. That small streak of light and opening had revealed a grey day in the world outside the Uchiha compound. Her eyes were trained on the scenery outside– the rain that continued coming down in pelts and the endless pitter-patter as it hit the window.

Sakura's back was blue, unlike the imagery from his memories, usually painted red in her memorable blouse or white like her doctor's cloak. It seemed to prod restlessly at his memory, eager to unearth some forgotten scene from his past. The blue of her back felt unreal. It did not resemble any blue he had seen before– not the vast sky, the droplets that trickled annoyingly from his leaking faucet or the river he passed by occasionally on his walks around Konoha.

Instead, it made him think of an immense body of water, large and endless, an imaginary scenery sprung from the corners of his mind. Sasuke rarely thought of water. It was usually only _fire_– with his clan, with his own chakra affinity and with his natural penchant towards warmth. He had only recalled being near the ocean once, after Itachi's death, the salty air filling his lungs and the breeze wrapping him in a comfortable chill. The blue of her back was picking at his imagination, bringing to mind saccharine images of rolling waves and sea foam.

He was grateful for little pockets of silence like these– where time seemed to have come to a comfortable halt, as though he was suspended between the present and the future, the short interval before the clock hands continued its everyday motion. With the possibility of madness lurking at the fissures of his mind and the darkness that seemed unwilling to let him go even after so long, Sasuke knew that such peace was not something he received every day.

Sasuke called out to the girl before him, fully intending to embrace her again. Her back was tempting him and he could not shake off his own yearning for the softness of her skin and the feeling of hearing her heartbeat synchronize with his own. But, no sound came from his lips which felt coarse and parched. Sakura's back remained rooted by the window like an unchanging still from a movie.

He lifted himself off the bed, the sound of his creaking bed and rustling bedsheets prompting Sakura to turn around and face him. Sasuke moved his feet, intending to close the distance between their two figures, _but_– he does not move.

The peace he had enjoyed a moment ago was now gone, the transition had come to a finish and he was finally in the next moment, his mind slowly growing dizzy, throbbing from the headache before and his unmoving feet felt like heavy metal weights. His movement was uncoordinated and his head spun. _All it takes is one wrong move and he will fall_, Sasuke thought.

Sakura had caught him while he stumbled on his wobbly feet and numb limbs. He saw worry reflected in her eyes– too much worry and in his worst imagination, he imagined he saw _pity_ too. The thought made Sasuke's stomach turn, irritation stirring in his chest.

He was in her arms again, reliant on her again, and he hated it.

**7.00PM**

Sakura remained firmly and stubbornly by his side, much to his annoyance. Her insistence to monitor him closely unnerved him. The desire to hold her close before had dissipated, having been replaced by agitation and discomfort. Uchiha Sasuke did not like being under anyone's scrutiny. Not especially in his current state. Once, he had been a formidable ninja, his sharingan capable of materializing nightmares and hell, body poised to fight and he was feared, he was an avenger, he was an efficient and ruthless killer. No one's scrutiny had scared him because he knew he was better than them. He had been _superior_.

But now, his chakra bands held his sharingan and power back, his body had wasted away in his reclusive months and his training sessions with Naruto which aimed to put him back on track only seemed to reinforce the disparity between the two. Naruto– the shining hero, accomplished and capable, powerful and undefeatable and the village's favorite for Hokage. Naruto had a legacy and a legion of fans. Naruto had _power_. Sasuke…had three important people in his life and nothing much more. Anyone's scrutiny could break him or send him in a flying rage.

When Sasuke finally snapped at Sakura, irritated that she was coddling him more than she should, her worried eyes following his every movement, he felt a piece of his own heart drop at seeing her expression darkened. Distancing herself, eyes turning wide for a moment before it scrambled to maintain its façade, her lips tightened into a thin line as though trying to stifle any miserable sounds she may accidentally let escape. She had been unused to the Uchiha's sudden display of harshness when he had been nothing but gentle and cordial with her for the past few weeks.

The memory of their shared embrace had softened her, had made her loosened her defenses around him. She had let go of the fort around her heart. She had forgotten how much she really loved Uchiha Sasuke and how he could drown her with the weight of her feelings. _He could take everything she had to offer and she would still be willing to give more._ Her façade was back in place and along with it were also the towering walls she built around her heart. The degree of love she had for him was equivalent to the amount of hurt he could inflict on her. That painfully honest thought had frightened her.

Her walls were made of wax and tears. It would succumb easily to Sasuke's brilliant flames.

Sasuke noticed the silent look of understanding that passed her face. He imagined it signaled her knowledge that she was once again opening her eyes to who he truly was. _He was always going to hurt her._ A chidori, biting words, the loud slap of a loving hand or the silent disregard of sliced apples that appeared by his tableside day after day. One tight embrace and nights of hand holding cannot change their inherent nature. She was a fool to think otherwise and he was better off nursing his hurt by himself, licking his own wounds rather than relying on a pink-haired girl to save him, time and time again.

Sakura remained tentative and careful throughout their entire dinner at Ichiraku Ramen, even as she smiled and laughed along to Naruto's jokes. Sasuke felt himself growing more incensed and tired, he felt uncomfortable in his seat, sweat making the fabric of his shirt stick to his back and the conversations happening around him felt like noise, pecking stubbornly at his patience until there was little of it left. The ruckus of Ichiraku Ramen, the glaring night lights of a bustling Konoha, the wide array of smells that assaulted his senses– the overpowering stimuli around him were starting to make his head swirl, beckoning the nagging ache in his skull to resurface.

In a room, filled with his three most important people, Uchiha Sasuke felt utterly alone. And Sakura noticed. She saw his eyes growing downcast, she saw him withdrawing deeper and deeper into himself and she saw him slipping away. When she finally mustered enough courage to reach forward to touch him, prepared with the thought that she might just be pushed away _again_, she realized that it was too late. Her touch on his shoulder felt like touching a surface of chilled glass– her hand was sliding off, her fingers retracted from the chill and …she loses her grip.

**10.00PM**

It did not take a lot to break Sakura. Sakura had a heart that felt in excess. For the first time, tonight, Naruto's stubborn prying and blue eyes fraught with concern broke Sakura. It would be a long night filled with plenty more breaking and tears.

"I don't think Sasuke-kun is _okay_. I'm…worried. One moment, he seems okay and other times, I see something that makes me reconsider." Sakura spoke, after keeping quiet for so long. Sasuke had retreated to his bedroom for an early night and Kakashi had excused himself, wanting to take a stroll across the Uchiha mansion in the chilly night. Naruto and Sakura sat in Sasuke's backyard, alone, worried and unsettled.

"But, teme has always been like this…you know…" Naruto was referring to Sasuke's erratic moods and his quickness to retreat back to his cool exterior. "Sasuke has a lot of pride. I think he is a little hurt after losing so much.

"I–" Sakura's eyes were glazing over, hinting at the onslaught of tears to come. She blinked furiously, trying to stop the barrage of tears that were ever present when Sasuke wormed his way into her system. "You're right. I think he's starting to see what else he has lost besides his family."

"I feel bad." The blonde laid down on the grass, his arms outstretched and a long exaggerated sigh escaping from his lips. Sakura impulsively pushed away the unruly blonde hair that fell over his eyes. It was a sign of her affection for the blonde. She sensed Naruto mulling over Sasuke, trying his hardest to figure out the enigmatic Uchiha. Naruto wanted to help Sasuke too, wanting to save his best friend but he reached no conclusions and said nothing.

"Naruto…" Sakura felt like this was the only time she would ever say the words that followed. Maybe it was because Naruto's blonde hair and blue eyes in the soft light of the moon reminded her of Ino's ones– kind, concerned and nosy. Sakura missed talking to her best friend, but Ino had been away since three days ago on a tough interrogation in one of the neighboring villages. "I-I'm…" Her voice cracked with emotion and Naruto seemed to notice, his eyes growing vigilant. "_I'm so tired_."

Sakura was already anticipating Naruto's signature just-cry-it-out embrace, the blonde's arms were outstretched and he was moving towards her when Sasuke's scream stopped the two. Sasuke was screaming for Kakashi. Sakura picked herself up roughly from the ground, almost tripping over her own boots (boots Sasuke had bought for her) but Naruto steadied her, pulling her as they rushed towards Sasuke's bedroom. Sakura's heart was pounding fast and hard against her chest. She felt her breathing grow faster and ragged, she did not want to expect the worst but her mind already invoked the worst possible imageries.

Five months of peace, of thinking that Sasuke was on his road to recovery and then _this_. She willed herself not to break again, hands covering her mouth, trying to quell the sobs that seeped out from her being.

**11.00PM**

Sasuke was screaming for Kakashi but the silver-haired man was not there. He was calling out for someone who would not be able to hear him. Instead, Naruto and Sakura rushed to his call, watchful and distressed. Naruto had been the first to approach Sasuke's defeated figure, while Sakura stood by the door unmoving, rooted by a fear that reverberated loudly in her being. She felt herself coming dangerously close to breaking– tears already welling in her eyes, her hands were shaking and her lips were quivering with words that had drowned in the sea of her overflowing tears.

Her mind was slowly registering the scene in front of her but it was replaying a scene from before, a scene reminiscent of this, where Sasuke had been frantic and manic, driven close to the edge of darkness and death. The thought of losing him a _second_ time, after everything, every single thing that she had done and that he conquered, paralyzed her and send her reeling. Sakura choked on her own tears that poured freely and endlessly.

Naruto struggled to get Sasuke up when his ears picked the sound of Sakura's cries as she wilted, her knees dropping as she fell to the ground. But, he is just _one_ person. He cannot effectively comfort two people, although he tried. He slapped Sasuke's cheeks to wake the boy, pushing a glass of cold water to him, forcing him to down it and as Sasuke gulped down the cool liquid, Naruto walked over to Sakura, gently picking up her fallen form. The blonde settled her on the spot beside Sasuke, on a bed that Sasuke had slept alone in for long lonely months.

His cerulean eyes darted frequently between his two best friends, two people he loved to death and he grabbed both of their hands and squeezed hard.

"Sakura," He looked at the pink-haired girl who was trying to regain her composure. "Sasuke," Blue eyes found dark ones. "We are a family." His own voice felt like a faint whisper, insignificant and tiny. Sakura's tears and Sasuke's dark eyes, their hands wrapped in his, he was beginning to cry too. _Where was the conviction and confidence he spoke with, long ago in a battlefield, where he managed to talk down even Uchiha Obito, hell-bent on spending the world into chaos? _He could convince a dangerous villain who lusted for the destruction of the world but he did not have the eloquence to communicate his feelings to the two people whom he loved with his whole heart.

Naruto took Sakura and Sasuke's hands and placed them above each other, the contact made Sakura flinch.

"I cannot lose the both of you. I cannot lose my family." Naruto's voice was a little louder now, the tears falling unrestrained from his eyes.

The sensation of Naruto's tears on Sakura's hands jolted her awake abruptly. It was a wake-up call to dry her eyes and to be strong. She had resolved not to let Naruto carry the burden long before, she had resolved not to see him cry, not to see any of her two boys falter and break like this but she had been the first one to break. Sakura wiped away her tears roughly with her sleeve and gripped their calloused battle-weary hands. They would have to get through this night, even if it killed them.

She leaned forward and planted a kiss on Naruto's cheek, cupping his face in her hands.

"Don't cry anymore, Naruto, _please_."

It was easy to be affectionate around Naruto. He was someone everyone had warmed up to easily, but to her, he was always a little special and she would always love him like he was a part of her heart. He was her family, a family forged not in blood but through shared bloodshed, the sound of clashing kunais and growing up in a world too gritty and solemn for naïve young genins. Naruto, with his bright hair and bright eyes, reminded her of the sun suspended in a clear blue sky, staring down at her. She would be damned if the sun began to cry. Naruto touched the hand that cupped his cheek affectionately, a small gesture meant to show his appreciation for Sakura's tenderness.

And Sasuke, who Sakura was frightened of being affectionate to, she struggled to think what she could do to show him that she was there and she cared. He was so close to her, their faces mere inches apart but she knew of the unreachable distances that crossed between his onyx eyes and her emerald ones. She forced herself to swallow any sobs determined to force its way out of her dry lips. _This is Uchiha Sasuke_. The sole person in the entire world who had the complete ability to destroy her, demolish all the forts she had built around her heart and even break her already broken heart– a tired and aching organ already recoiling from any possible hurt that Uchiha Sasuke could possibly inflict.

Ino thought Sakura was masochistic for loving Sasuke despite everything and her own mother hated Sasuke's guts for throwing Sakura into such despair but Sakura loved Sasuke and that was _all_. She picked up his hand, spidery piano fingers trembling in her grip and forced herself to stare deep into his dark eyes, in spite of her own nervousness. In onyx eyes, she watched pools of restless energy– a bubbling mix of fear, anxiety, worry and sleeplessness. She did not have enough courage to kiss Sasuke on the cheek, the thought of her lips on him, on any part of him, threatened to steal whatever will and energy she had left in her to pull through the long night.

She also feared that her lips would find a cheek too cold to touch, skin deathly cold like a corpse. But… the rejection so synonymous with Uchiha Sasuke was what scared her the most, pricking at her nerves uncomfortably– a swerve, a swat, a distinct jab and the hurt that followed, one that she had been familiar with. So, Sakura settled for a kiss on his hands.

"Sasuke-kun, _we're here_." She muttered into his hands.

"We're here. We're here. We're here."

The words continue resonating throughout the night. Sasuke recalled Sakura's mantra to him, repeated in his past year of battling his mind as he tried to recover his own identity, a self separate from the darkness that danced close to his blood.

_You're Uchiha Sasuke. _

An avenger with dark hair and red eyes, pale skin with a hollowed heart, dark curse marks that covered his visage, a frown dug deep in his thin scowling lips and trails of blood making pathways down his eyes like an insomniac's eyebags. A shaking boy cowering in fear vividly relived through the exhausted shell of a former avenger. He who used to possess a family of blood, who used to possess a brother, who used to possess a snake's bite and darkened wings, who used to possess power and who used to be _whole_.

_You are an Uchiha. _

Fire. Red flames that engulfed his small frame, that earned his father's approval. Black flames that burnt everything to the ground. It burnt everything to soot, to ashes, to nothingness. Dark eyes made red from all the blood spilled and shed in the name of power. A fan decorated in red and white. The red slowly discoloring the lucid white. The sunken lines on brother's face that he memorized by heart. Mother's hands, shriveled and resembling prunes from washing dishes. Father's gruff approval at his stellar Academy scores. Corpses.

_You're a part of Team 7._

Smiling faces, raucous laughter, embarrassment, ramen, his heart in a turbulent conflict as it edged close to abandoning his vengeance. Pink hair, green eyes, words that rung in his ears, an annoyance, blue lightning inherited to protect the ones he loved, a blonde idiot whose natural talent he refused to acknowledge and the strangled screams of a girl as she came between swirling chakra and surges of lightning. Rice balls wrapped lovingly, devoid of flavor but brimming with love. The unending friendship offered by a blonde. Tears. More screaming.

_Your chakra affinity is fire and lightning. _

The flimsy piece of paper wrinkling under his grip and the relentless scorching of searing flames.

_You're a war hero. _

A battle fought, a battle won, a side he chose, a role he played, relatives he saw die again and the lone terrifying emptying and real fact that the Uchiha clan was composed of corpses and _him_. The sound of Sakura's fist reverberating in his ears, the joy in Naruto's eyes and Kakashi's saddened expression as he bade farewell to Uchiha Obito. The endless crying behind the silver-haired man's eyes that do not water even when they wanted desperately to.

_There are people who love you that are not dead._

A confession that silenced him and the screaming words of an annoying girl too naïve and gentle to dive down into darkness with him– _"I love you so much, I can't even stand it!"_.

All night, he tried to be comforted by those words, even as shudders rocked his body and a feeling of general unease battled his mind for sleep. Sasuke's mind was beginning to feel increasingly fatigued again. His body was starting to show signs, symptoms he could neither hide nor prevent, reminders of _something_.

That night, Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke fell asleep on the same bed, their bodies brushed against each other uncomfortably. Sasuke's bed was too small for the three of them together, even if they were squeezed against each other. When Sakura imagined sleeping on the same bed with her boys, she always pictured herself sandwiched between two, falling asleep to the sound of Naruto's soft snores and Sasuke's heavy breathing, her hands entwined in theirs.

But, the reality now could not be any more different from her dream. Sasuke was the one wedged between Naruto and her. Naruto held the hand of his best friend, as a sign of support but his eyes were honed in on Sakura, worry saturating his cerulean orbs. Sakura had occupied the side of the bed that Sasuke faced so she had a gratuitous view of his whole face– eyes squeezed shut, eyebrows twisted in a tight knot, his coarse lips and the beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead. It took everything in her not to reach out and smooth the knots in his eyebrows and in his face, to wipe the sweat away and just to _touch_ him but she restrained herself and did nothing, choosing not to disturb Sasuke's sleep.

As Naruto's snores filled the room and Sasuke continued to jerk in his sleep, Sakura found herself unable to transcend into slumber. Her heart felt like it was going into overdrive, this close to Sasuke, she could easily breathe him in– sweat, shampoo, and incense from the one he left burning in the altar but she could also pick up…unease, discomfort and fear. His hair stuck to his forehead in wet clumps and she could pick up the goosebumps appearing on his skin.

When she touched his forehead, the coldness set her off. Sasuke was _fire_, always fire to her, searing flames too hot to touch, he _burned _like an Uchiha would but the coldness of his body felt like a contradiction of his inherent nature. He was breaking into cold sweat.

As the hours ticked away, she found another thing that triggered her fear. She bit down on her lips to calm her nerves but they ran wild. Her hands…were losing his, his sweaty palms were slipping from hers and she was losing him, to the tangle of bed sheets, to the nightmares he was reliving in his closed eyes and to everything. She was certain in the morning when Sasuke woke, he would seem unchanged, but if she took a closer look, if she saw the trembles that spooked bis body or the jittery unease in his eyes, then she would _know_– his body was beginning to break all over again. She cried to herself as Sasuke fell again. Fell into the same abyss she had promised to pick him up from. She could not pick him up if his hand was gone from hers.

**July 22**

Sakura woke before Sasuke did. She absent mindedly wiped at her cheeks that were wet with tears shed last night. When she pressed her eyes shut in an attempt to rinse away the last traces of sleep, they ached with exhaustion, begging at her for rest. But rest would not come now. Not at least until she confirmed Sasuke's condition and the course of action to follow.

Her eyes were just about to close again when the kicking of bed sheets and the iron grip of Sasuke's hands roused her roughly. His eyes and fingers had found hers and the fear dancing in his onyx optics was making her lose her cool, fearful thoughts coming one after another. Sakura willed herself to stay calm, to analyze his condition, to take it in objectively but her emotions were growing wild.

"Sakura." Sasuke called out to her, his voice terse and thick with tension. "My limbs, I-" He choked before stiffening, wrapping himself with his hands before he proceeded to shake his limbs violently, shocking Sakura and stirring Naruto from his sleep. "I can't feel them. I-What's happening?" The genuine fear leaking from his words stole Sakura's words and composure.

"_Sakura._" He beckoned at her again, his voice louder and more agitated. His thrashing became more violent as he tried to revive any sense of feeling in his limbs.

His urgent voice and grip on her hand pulled Sakura out of her trance as she tried to find her cool. _Breathe_, Sakura thought, taking in mouthfuls of oxygen as she slowed the rapid beating of her heart. She focused on Sasuke's grip on her hand, using it to anchor her, as she recollected her composure and cool.

Emerald eyes grew sharp, instinct taking over, the same instinct she developed as a doctor, her hands reached out for his right limb and steadied them, practiced fingers poking at various points of his limb whilst making quiet observations. When Sasuke remained aggressive and fearful, she halted her observations, choosing instead to concentrate on treating his numbness and lack of feeling. Naruto watched sleepily as Sakura skillfully massaged Sasuke's right limb, attempting to emulate her movements so that he could do the same with Sasuke's left limb.

It took an hour for feeling to crawl back into Sasuke's limbs and when it did, it emerged in sharp pangs of pain. Sasuke grimaced and cursed but the pain that flooded him was one that he welcomed. It reminded him that he was still in the world of living and that his limbs were still his.

Later on, Kakashi dropped by with breakfast, surprised to see three of his students sharing Sasuke's bed. He exited the Uchiha compound again to get breakfast for more. When he arrived back, they were already seated by the dining table, eyes heavy from exhaustion. Sasuke stared ahead with dead eyes, lips twisted in a thin line. There was a sense of keenness to Naruto and Sakura's movements and posture, as they anticipated for something…_anything_. Team 7 ate their meals silently. The curtains in the kitchen were still drawn shut so everything was blanketed in a cold darkness, one that charmed Sakura with sleep.

After breakfast, Sasuke got up abruptly, clutching his stomach and Sakura instinctually knew. She stood up, ready to escort him to the toilet but it was Naruto instead who accompanied Sasuke. Sakura was left standing in the cold kitchen with Kakashi as she tolerated the sound of Sasuke's dry retching and Naruto's soft murmurs of comfort. Each sound felt like a punch to her heart._ There was no vomit._ Sakura knew. _Only Sasuke attempting to hurl out whatever that was eating him from the inside out. _

Nausea hit Sakura unexpectedly and she rushed to crouch against Sasuke's sink. When the vomit came, a clear mess of last night's ramen down the sink, far more solid than Sasuke's dry retching, she was thankful that Kakashi was there to hold her hair and pat her back gently. The feeling of being taken care of was something Sakura missed. She had been so busy trying to take care of Sasuke that she hardly had the time to consider herself propelry in the equation. She recalled her mother's eyes sharp with worry and the nagging that ensued, that her thoughts strayed to the Sasuke and she tried not to remember Sasuke snapping at her over dinner, agitated and tired of her suffocating concern.

In the following hours, Sasuke fell prey to the same piercing headache he experienced a day before. They came and disappeared but they came anyway. As he massaged his own temples and tried to steady his breathing, Naruto and Kakashi readied glasses of water. They waited patiently by Sasuke's side, unable to do anything but watch. Sakura, weak from vomiting and exhaustion, felt something tugging at her, calling out to her with images of her bed and the soft comfort of sleep. She downed another cup of coffee– dark, bitter and thick– to fight the exhaustion. Her hands moved mechanically as words poured from her pen. She was writing her evaluation report on Sasuke's condition.

When she looked up, in hopes for a brief respite from the pages of words, she noticed the droplets of sweat accumulating on Sasuke's forehead and neck. Tiny droplets of water that betrayed the coldness of Sasuke's room. He was breaking into cold sweat again. In that solitary moment, Sasuke's dependence on Xanax became increasingly obvious. Flashes of the day before– Sasuke's agitation, his headaches and nightmares– they were withdrawal symptoms from Xanax. They were signs of her own failure as a doctor and as Sasuke's savior. The thought that her careful administration and cautious measurement of dosages had done nothing to overcome Sasuke's imminent physical dependence to the capsule filled Sakura's heart with a sinking heaviness.

It was the merciless and indispensable weight of regret. She had given Sasuke yet another demon to battle.

Later on, Tsunade took the report from the hands of her tired apprentice. She avoided questioning why the ink smudged on certain pages, hazel eyes focused on the droplets of water droplets that distorted the cursive slant of Sakura's handwriting. Sakura's red-rimmed eyes were tell-tale signs.

**July 23**

Sasuke woke up feeling better than he did the past two days. There was no dull ache or piercing pain. Every part of his body felt attached to him. He was back to the present today, _for now_. The curtains were parted today and flickers of sunlight poured through his dank kitchen. While Sasuke had breakfast with Kakashi, he caught a glimpse of pink and red as Sakura greeted the ANBU squad stationed outside his house with slight smiles.

He heard the sound of keys jangling as his door unlocked. Kakashi had given both Naruto and Sakura sets of Sasuke's house keys. Sasuke did not protest. With the frequency of their visits, they were starting to feel like permanent fixtures in his house.

"Good morning, Kakashi-sensei." Sakura greeted her former instructor, dark eyes greeting her warmly. She could see the grin forming beneath his mask, or so she pretended.

She turned to face Sasuke who had been silent all morning.

"_Happy birthday, Sasuke-kun."_

Sasuke nodded in acknowledgement. His birthday was not anything special or significant to him. It was not a date he marked out on his calendar. He had passed three years without once celebrating it. The passage of time was one he marked out with the rising and setting of the sun. A year older for him meant little because nothing changed regardless of how old he grew.

"Well, I promised to see Tsunade before Sasuke's appointment with her so I better get going." Kakashi got up and excused himself, casting one last look at Sasuke whose face remained unreadable and Sakura who stood ramrod straight in the middle of Sasuke's kitchen.

A few moments after the sound of Sasuke's front door clicked shut, Sakura decided that she could not possibly stand for the entire duration of the morning. She walked forward and took a seat beside Sasuke. If she had chosen the seat opposite him, she would be troubling herself with finding means and ways to avoid his lingering stare and vacant eyes. They still had two more hours to waste before Sasuke's appointment with Tsunade, where Sakura would relay the details of her evaluation. Sakura sensed that Sasuke already knew.

"Sasuke-kun, is there any coffee?" She asked, bleary eyed and stifling a yawn.

Sasuke turned to face her, taking in her appearance– dull pink hair devoid of its usual buoyancy, lying limply by the side of her face, oily parts of her fringe pressed against her forehead, the grey circles that spilled from beneath emerald eyes ringed with red, an uneven complexion and her fidgety composure– "I'd make some for you." He rose from the chair, grabbing the sachet of coffee powder from a drawer and emptying it into the green mug that Sakura often used in one quick motion before mixing it with the hot water he had just boiled from the kettle.

The smell of coffee refreshed Sakura's senses. She happily helped herself to the small mug of darkness– dark black coffee without sugar or milk, the coffee that Sasuke prepared– allowing it to drive the sleepiness away. It does not rid Sakura of her exhaustion but the hot liquid helped Sakura regain a bit of her focus again. Fingers curled over the mug, she felt a sense of peace filled her temporarily, it was one she had not experienced in the past few months as her mind worked tirelessly at taking care of Sasuke and at worrying over Sasuke. He had become such an inherent part of her being. Even in her last waking moments before sleep, it was Sasuke whom she thought of, her mind vividly wondering if he was fast asleep or tossing and turning from what he saw in the landscape of his dreams.

As she made idle conversation with Sasuke, relieved to know he was doing better this morning, thier mundane conversation brought a few genuine smiles on her lips, making her feel more happy than she had in the past couple of days. She yearned for that placid normalcy that pervaded the lives of others– to talk about the weather casually instead of having to cautiously skirt around topics of whether he was mentally sane or whether his sleep was ravaged by nightmares. A headache was slowly setting in with each word Sasuke and Sakura had exchanged, Sakura rubbed at the sides of her forehead in trying to soothe it. Sasuke's eyebrows narrowed, recognizing the familiar action before him.

Her headache had been brought about by her lack of sleep. She had spent the entirety of last night emptying the hospital's archives, old patient's files– a distant memory of a male patient whom she had dealt with two years back. He had developed an unhealthy dependence to the improved soldier pills she had manufactured, the uncanny similarities between his case and Sasuke's present condition had bothered her.

The withdrawal symptoms and fleeting instances of pain she had detailed in her report almost mirrored what Sasuke was going through. Coupled with her lack of sleep the night before, where she shared the same bed with Naruto and Sasuke, Haruno Sakura was going on close to 35 hours without sleep. The exhaustion was beginning to take its toll on her but she would first go through Sasuke's appointment with Tsunade before she let sleep laid its claim on her.

Sakura excused herself to the toilet after her second cup of coffee, a weird malaise was spreading through her body, making her uncomfortable and fidgety. In the toilet, she emptied her pockets, trying to find the bar of pills she had assumed she brought with her. White rows of pills that she knew could help her in her battle against sleep, headaches and the dizziness that was slowly beginning to manifest. Her pockets turned up empty.

She steadied her fingers on her temples, green chakra slowly embodying comforting ripples, wringing out the signs of her own exhaustion. She could have easily used medical ninjutsu to rid herself of such ailments in the first place but the risk of exerting chakra and collapsing to exhaustion was very real and potent. It was not a risk she had wanted to take but she did anyway.

Sasuke drummed his fingers against the wooden dining table absentmindedly, his eyes taking in the empty landscape of his kitchen. Today, his mind was surprisingly vacant, no demons poked fun at him, no nightmarish horrors scratched at the edges of his mind and he almost lost himself to this welcomed tranquility until he noticed the empty seat beside him, the drawn out chair without a person, Sakura's prolonged absence. She had excused herself for the toilet several long minutes ago.

He got up and walked towards the toilet. Fingers drumming now against the toilet door, soft knocks turning to hard ones, ears pressed against the door, seeking out her voice. It did not take long for his anxiety to find him– heart palpitations, sweating and an uncontrollable urgency. It did not take him long to kick the door open. It did not take him long to react to the sight of Sakura's fallen form on the white tiles of his toilet. Her red back against the sterile white tiles send him into near hysteria.

A scream tore from his throat, his feet felt like hardened cement melded to the ground but he forced himself to move. He stumbled, almost tripping over his own feet as he made his way over to Sakura. _There is no blood_, he repeated to himself but his mind was fragmenting, splitting into tiny pieces at the redness of her top, of her back and of her. There were associations he was afraid to make and memories he refused to relive, he was fighting against his own mind that was determined to break him _again_. He was shaking, eyes flitting nervously from Sakura's face to her back.

When Naruto arrived at Sasuke's place, blue eyes coming into contact with Sasuke and Sakura, one paralyzed with shock and fear and another unconscious, he tried furiously not to let panic overwhelm him. His fingers trembled as he dialed for Kakashi.

Moments later, Kakashi rushed down with Tsuande. A faint frown graced the Godaime's face as she approached Sasuke and Sakura. She attended to her unconscious pupil, having to first forcibly pull Sasuke away from Sakura, his fingers had left lingering marks of red against her skin from how hard he had gripped her.

Moments later, as the afternoon sun bore down heavily, Sasuke turned 20 and Sakura was transported to the hospital, made to rest in a bed.

"She fainted from exhaustion." Tsunade had replied earlier, a look of worry crossing her face.

_He was a year older._

Tsunade waited for Sasuke to calm himself before she broke news of Sakura's report to him. "You're suffering from withdrawal symptoms from Xanax. Your body has become physically dependent on it so it cannot adjust to its absence. We will have to follow up with an proper treatment. Sakura came up with a plan of tapering your dosages of Xanax for…" Sasuke was not processing Tsunade's words, all he could make out were lines and the slowed movement of Tsunade's red lips. His clarity was gone and his mind was not registering anything except for the sound of his hammering heart.

_A year more of carrying around his heavy heart._ _A new year of mornings that started out okay and afternoons that chipped away at his sanity.  
__  
_A year before, he had tried to kill Sakura, the sight of her mangled, bruised and dead filled him with a fiendish delight and a year after, the sight of her unconscious had sent him into a state of frozen shock. It had triggered the darker parts of himself. Memories he had tried furiously to keep buried were resurfacing again on the surface of the water, the red of her back charged at his defenses like a force of nature leaving him feeling shipwrecked and a little lost._  
_

But, he finally listened, he finally registered and heard what Tsunade had to say when she announced the _unthinkable_– Naruto went in a flying rage, the unruly blonde protesting stubbornly but Sasuke thought that Kakashi's silent resignation was louder than any of Naruto's screaming words. Sasuke's mind finally registered Tsunade's words.

_Sasuke was 20 and closer to finishing his probation than before._

"_What about your future, Sasuke-kun?" Sakura's voice ringed in his mind._

"Uchiha Sasuke, I deem you unfit to be a ninja."

–

**09½.**  
_(20 years old. Sasuke and Sakura, quiet moments of intimacy, as Sakura begs for his forgiveness.)_

Sakura woke up to the sound of a knife cutting through something. She shot up from the hospital bed, arms flying across her face, poised defensively. The white walls of the hospital surprised her, she did not usually fell asleep at work but the figure by her side left her even more surprised, any comments she had thought before dying at her lips.

She could make out fingers shaving the skin of green applies. The kind of apples she loved best. Her observant eyes noticed the slight tremors that broke the otherwise still image of Uchiha Sasuke. Her first thought, strange as it may be was, _since when did Tsunade trusted Sasuke enough to equip him with a knife? _The two ANBUs dressed in dark colors by Sakura's door must be the answer.

Sasuke looked up at her, letting the knife drop by the plate of apples, he still had some more left but first, _Sakura_.

"Sakura." He called out to her but her sight was trained on the plate of neatly peeled apples. Disbelieving eyes, he noted and her lips were slightly parted. He did not want to imagine the words that had tried to force their way out of her mouth only to die at her lips. Sakura was speechless, heart in her throat, nervous and disbelieving.

"Good morning." He greeted her curtly. His voice sounded uneasy in his own ears, a bad attempt at trying to keep a hold over the emotions bubbling behind his cool façade.

It took Sakura a while to realize that Sasuke was talking to her. Her response, awkward and quickly uttered, reciprocated his greeting. Sasuke allowed her some time to herself to recollect her thoughts and find her footing. She had been out for the entire night and morning. He watched as her emerald eyes distantly glinted, sleep had reignited the light in her eyes. Sakura's mind was scrambling to piece together things Sasuke knew too well.

"How long was I out?" Sakura asked tentatively, a little afraid at the answer she might receive.

"Just last night and this morning."

The frown on her face relaxed slightly. "I collapsed…right? From exhaustion, I presume?" With the last of sleep still playing at her eyelids, her memory continued to be a blur. A dull ache throbbed at the back of her head, possibly from her excessive sleep.

"You collapsed yesterday afternoon at…" Sasuke said, pausing to contain his emotions, forcefully bidding the familiar surge of emotions at her fallen form to the back of his mind. "My house."

Sasuke looked at her and saw the emotions that vividly coalesced in the emerald pools of her eyes. Worry, dread and panic was what he observed. He knew that Sakura's memories were coming to her in fast flashes, short intense instances playing before her eyes.

"Sasuke-kun, I–"

He interrupted her. "I know."

"I'm…" The words were dying at her lips again. Her eyes darted from the plate of apples, to the tremors that ghosted Sasuke's arm, the white of the hospital room and then– she recalled her report, smudged ink, horribly cursive handwriting and almost illegible words detailing what she had subjected Sasuke to when she stubbornly decided to prescribe him the pill and then, afraid to see anything more, she forced her eyes shut.

The words came a little later.

"I'm so sorry." They came all in one instant and poured endlessly. "I'm sorry. _I'm so sorry. _I'm sorry."

To Sasuke, her apologies felt unwarranted. He did not know what Sakura was apologizing for. But, she continued to apologize profusely. Her lids were firmly shut, her eyebrows creased and her _sorry_s rushed out like water gushing from a broken dam. He battled his urge to correct her and to stop her from apologizing but he remained quiet, silently absorbing her broken apologies. Uchiha Sasuke let Haruno Sakura apologize to him, over and over again. S_he had nothing to apologize for. _He felt a stab of regret hit him. She apologized until her voice broke, until her throat became dry from speaking and the tears that she had willed back were flowing even behind her closed eyes.

When Sakura sat up to gulp down the glass of water Sasuke offered, he finally permitted himself to speak. He did not want to wait until another barrage of apologies and another time where her voice broke.

"What are you apologizing for?" His voice was gentle, hiding his increasing frustration. He was frustrated that Sakura would choose to berate and blame herself for his own downfall, his family's penchant for madness and his own inadequacy.

"_Xanax_. It was me. I was the one who enforced that prescription." Sakura replied, after finishing the glass of water. She wiped at the tears clinging onto her cheeks, her eyes were swollen now after crying too much.

"It doesn't matter." Sasuke gruffly retorted, his hand picking up the knife and resuming his task of peeling the skin off the apples.

"What you're going through now– the withdrawal symptoms, the nightmares, the loss of feeling, the brief periods of disconnection from reality, the anxiety, the agitation and the pain…it's because of me." Her voice was breaking again, growing hoarse with emotion. She tried to keep steady contact with Sasuke's coal eyes but the moment the tears flowed again, she diverted her eyes away. She turned to her side, her _back_ facing Sasuke, her words growing muffled. "I shouldn't have been so impulsive…I…"

Sasuke strained to make out the words she mumbled to her pillow, in between her sobs and anguished cries but he heard nothing.

So, he interrupted her again, hoping she would not take his intrusions harshly.

"You helped me. Naruto, Kakashi, you…_Sakura, _you saved me."

Sakura's crying stopped but her back still faced him. She was still in the same attire as before. Red blouse with a white circle across her back and strands of messy pink hair had slightly obscured his view of the Haruno circle which had since became a permanent image in his memory bank. But, her back was still the same back in his thoughts. The red was not eliciting the same lash of distressed feelings and heartache. _At least not for now. _The red of her back had been one of his triggers, the trigger he saw everyday as she floated in to his house and accompanied him through his harshest battles with his mind. Just the sight of the red, her back, _her red back_ could send him wheezing, a panic attack aggressively stealing his breath and self-control.

Now, it was just Haruno Sakura's back that his eyes took in. It was the back of a girl who had done so much for him, who had sacrificed sleep, who had eyebags dark and obvious under her eyes, who was willing to give him everything she had in all of its abundance, when all he could do for her was sit by her figure, silently peeling apples.

Sasuke would be lying if he said he was fully recovered. There were still too _many_ times when his hand started to tremble beyond his control, compensating for the lack of Xanax in his system, when his skull throbbed from a persisting headache, when panic consumed him thinking of Sakura's fallen figure, when the fear of losing another person he loved to a place where he could no longer touch, feel or talk to them and the periods was much too much to bear and when he slipped into a place darker and inaccessible to anyone but those who carried the same brand of darkness and madness. He was not fully recovered but he was who he was now and today, breathing, very much alive, because of what _Sakura_, Kakashi and Naruto had done for him.

_Before_– Half a year after his return to Konoha, Sasuke had carried a death wish. He had been slowly unraveling, nightmares after nightmares. The Uchiha had lost his way in a twisted labyrinth that seemed endless and the thought of giving up was _so_ tempting. He was exhausted and sleep only birthed nightmares. Sasuke desired a long, peaceful and undisturbed rest. If death had seized him, he would have happily obliged.

But, against Sasuke's will and desires, even when he tried to kill himself, he was pushed to survive and forced to live. His survivor's instinct had kicked in when it caught a whiff of death's sickly pallor. It was a natural instinct he could not repress. He had been a survivor and just as killing was in his blood, living was in it as well.

As he slowly grappled with his history, the emptiness that echoed in him became a little less daunting. Sakura always made sure to remind him of a few things.

"_You're Uchiha Sasuke. You are an Uchiha. You're a part of Team 7. Your chakra affinity is fire and lightning. You're a war hero."_

It helped him remember who he was and who he had been.

It gave him hope of who he could be in the distant unfathomable future.

With Sakura's help and her insistence on repeating that mantra, Sasuke was slowly connecting the dots to his fractured identity. The last reminder was one that she added after one lonesome night where he had scratched at his face, nails sinking into his closed eyelids, trying to claw the nightmares out of them. _"There are people who love you that are not dead." _

Before, his fears and demons had manifested themselves into ghosts that wrecked him but somehow, he had found his way out of the labyrinth. Sasuke had found Ariadne's thread and then, as suddenly as his onset of madness had came, it was no longer he who unraveled. Ariadne's thread came in the form of pink hair and a distinct red back, smiling blue eyes often brimming with tears and the tired voice of an instructor who was more like a surrogate father.

The more his thread unraveled, the more he opened up. At first, it was small almost insignificant words which slowly evolved into full sentences choked with emotions. Sakura made personal visits everyday and they slowly made goals towards a future that Sasuke had never considered. She held his hand, forced tears, talked to him when he remained stubbornly silent and he cried– blood, at first, dripping continuously as Kakashi wiped at them deftly and then, he tasted salty ones on his own lips.

Naruto knew nothing about therapy but he knew how to talk to utterly broken and devastated people and he was best at offering unconditional love so he sat by Sasuke's side and waited. When the opportunity did present itself, first in small comforting touches that were brushed aside by Sasuke, it later evolved into long tear-stained embraces between the duo.

And when Sasuke finally started crying and opening up, his nightmares decreased in frequency, having been replaced by dreams of his elder brother speaking to him and encouraging him, of his mother laughing and his father's common frown. He even saw his younger self in his dreams, a smirk tugged on his lips, possibly in response to an idiotic comment Naruto had muttered. He recalled now how peace felt. When he stopped avoiding sleep so relentlessly, his mind stopped picking up phantom sights by his bed.

Sai even volunteered to repaint the Uchiha compound so Sasuke's past never had the chance to present itself again. Sakura also enlisted Ino's help to plant cherry blossom trees along the long corridors of the compound. Slowly, the compound was evolving and shedding off its ghostly memories. It smelled of fresh paint and months later, when the cherry blossoms bloomed, Sasuke finally stopped seeing the corpses of his family and the stink of blood. Instead, he saw the smiling faces of Team 7 on the walls, a mural that Sai had painted.

Sakura's forehead was too wide for her liking, Naruto's hair was red and flat like his mother, Sai looked a little more handsome than he actually was, Kakashi had wrinkles and thick pouty lips, Yamato's hair was white and Sasuke…looked unlike himself in his wide smile and crinkled eyes. (But, Sasuke does not repaint the mural even years later it when Kakashi begged him to.)

Sakura, Naruto and Kakashi– Team 7 had saved him. Sakura had held his hand when he refused her contact and talked to him even when words did not get through. She had remained by his side even when he had tried to kill her before, chidori poised to an unsuspecting back. _Why was she still apologizing?_

Sasuke looked up from the apples he was peeling. Sakura's back was no longer trembling as they were before with each sob that escaped her lips. It was a back that remained eerily still.

_Sakura does not truly register his words_, Sasuke thought. Because, she soon begun to apologize again, even as she struggled for breath in between her own overflowing tears. _What was she apologizing for?_ Sakura felt herself choking, struggling to breathe but her tears and apologies remained relentless. A part of her thought that she was not apologizing for breaking Sasuke. He had already been broken before he was in her care, in her hands. She could not break something that had already been broken.

I'm sorry. _I'm sorry._ I'm sorry.

She was apologizing for her lack of better judgement, for her impulsiveness and for _her own selfishness_.

Not many people considered Sasuke– _Uchiha_ Sasuke_– _fragile. Although, most looked upon him as though he was a damaged good. Sasuke wore his tragedy and pain like Naruto wore his charming smile. Uchiha Sasuke wore it like it was a part of him. The Uchiha emblem embroidered on the fabric of his top, the shackles of his past, the weight of his clan's history_–_ they were things that he carried with him, refusing to let them go.

Sakura had seen ninjas recoiling in fear at the sight of Sasuke. It pained her. They saw in his name, in his features, and in him_–_ criminal eyes that appeared in distant memories of a war fought long ago. The horrors of a war waged by Uchiha Madara and Uchiha Obito that had taken many precious lives continued to linger in the consciousness of the villagers even if the ninja world had found itself in a comfortable peace after the war's conclusion.

They knew that Uchiha Sasuke was a tragedy. He was broken. But, he was no prey. He was still a lethal predator. And predators do not break at the slightest mention of their past trauma. Predators do not need pink-haired girls shedding endless tears for them.

But Haruno Sakura knew, deep in her bones, that Uchiha Sasuke was a thing far more than broken. She could piece back broken things. But, Sasuke was not an unmade jigsaw puzzle waiting to be completed. He was incomplete and he had lacked all the parts that made him _him_. Her Sasuke (only in her mind did she referred to Sasuke like she owned him, it was a luxury she silently given herself) was not whole. He was missing. Still, even after being back, even after recovering, even after she witnessed his first genuine smile directed at her and even when she could feel him_– _muscle, sweat and loss_– _ like a real person (_not a ghost_, she thought thankfully, _Sasuke was not fading away_), when he had embraced her roughly and tightly.

Sasuke had been bereaved of something essential to his being and Sakura knew _again_ (an annoying habit of hers, an arrogance she refused to shake off, she always knew things, she was always knowledgeable by nature and when it came to Sasuke, there should be no argument) that a part of him had been surrendered to cold corpses buried six feet under and the memory of brilliant black flames that whipped dangerously. It was a part that she could never hope to reclaim.

And the added thought that now, she had taken away yet another thing from him. She had taken his cool composure, his calmness, the peace of mind she had so desired to give him– they were all being slowly replaced by the withdrawal symptoms of Xanax, signs that were startling obvious to her. Sasuke was unraveling again and it was because she had wanted desperately to believe a white capsule could change things.

She had wanted to believe that she could save him.

"Sakura." His voice was more forceful now, more urgent. The plate of apples slammed roughly on the table side followed by the clatter of the knife as it was tossed beside the plate. The loud clamor made her cringe in surprise. "You don't have to save me." His dark eyes concentrated on Sakura's hands, as they grabbed roughly onto bunches of the white blanket.

The same hands had grown numb from nights of handholding, hours of staying in the same position, clutching Sasuke's fingers. With the same hands, she had saved countles of lives, but the boy whose hand she had held before was not going to be one of them._ You cannot save people. You can only love them._

"Sakura." Sasuke was calling out to her again, twice now, or _was it thrice?_ His voice was aimed at her exposed back and suddenly, she felt vulnerable to him, even if he still had his chakra bands on and two lethal ANBUs targeting him. She trusted Sasuke, she truly did, but her back, the same tense back that had faced his deadly chidori would shirk away, forever affected by Sasuke's foreboding presence. She turned to face Sasuke and regretted it instantly because his next words caught her completely by surprise and dampened her eyes.

"_Thank you._"

He was genuine.

Sakura could tell from the honesty in his dark eyes, hard and unflinching, staring right into her. He took the plates of apples and handed them over and as she extended her hand to accept it, it was not the plate of apples that she received. Instead, it was Sasuke's fingers knotted in hers.

Later on, as Sakura quietly ate her apples with one hand, the other wrapped in Sasuke's, Sakura forced herself to stop feeling sorry, to stop saying sorry and instead, to focus on how she was going to help Sasuke get through his physical dependence on Xanax. She recited to him the elaborate recovery plan she had conjured and Sasuke listened patiently even if Tsunade had already briefed him about it beforehand. Sakura wanted to know that she was amending her mistake, even when Sasuke believed there was clearly no mistake of hers at all. He let her ramble because he knew this was the _only_ way she would heal and forgive herself. And that was all Sasuke wanted– for her to stop bending over backwards for him, for her to stop allowing him to thieve from her the things she needed to surive (sleep, breathing, time and a life outside of him). He wanted her to be better and for her to be well.

Eventually, Sasuke informed Sakura about Tsunade's final decision to ban him from becoming a ninja, effective upon the end of his probation. It was news he dreaded telling because it was news he still could not properly accept. He knew that Sakura would blame herself again but her lack of a violent reaction was unexpected. He anticipated screaming, angry words, face flushed red but Sakura remained quiet, in obvious shock, as the apple slipped from her hand and landed on the soft fabric of her blanket.

"It's for good reason." Sasuke added, even if his heart rebelled against Tsunade's decision. So much of his future, the future he had slowly talked out with Sakura, had hinged on him being a ninja. Being a ninja was such a crucial part of his identity, without it, _what little did he have left? _But, his mind knew why Tsunade had opposed to him being a ninja. If the sight of Sakura's unconscious body was not something he could compose himself to face, if corpses, blood and dead bodies sent him reeling, if fear had become a natural state he ricocheted and defaulted between, he could not possibly be an _effective _ninja.

"Your mind is not ready for it." Sakura grasped the logic immediately. She was her master's pupil after all. She could follow the nature of Tsunade's logic.

Sasuke nodded.

Her eyes finally found his and this time, in a voice louder than before, she comented with a smirk, "I will personally make sure that you find your way to becoming a ninja again._ A Chunin, even_."

He smirked at her implication that he could not make Chunin rank easily. Sakura had recently been offered her second recommendation to be promoted to Jounin and within days, the final decision would be confirmed by Tsunade. Sasuke was certain that she would make it to Jounin.

"You're Uchiha Sasuke. You are an Uchiha. You're a part of Team 7. Your chakra affinity is fire and lightning. _You're a war hero_." Sakura recited.

Sasuke's hold on her hands tightened just as his heart tightened. "There are people who love you that are not dead." He continued after her.

"_I_ love you." A quiet voice. An almost murmur. Sakura's voice had become a whisper he strained to hear. It contrasted so starkly with the memory of her screaming confession years ago, on a night where departure had been so close to him and a pink-haired girl had been so determined and stubborn to convince him to stay.

For a moment, the grip on her hand relaxed and a piece of Sakura's heart fell. She was startled that after her confession, he was– but, she was mistakened. His fingers had never left hers, at least not completely. His fingers now smoothed her sweat-drenched hair back from her forehead, traced the contours of her jaw before it rested on the side of her face, his hands cupping her cheek. He was trying to be affectionate with her but Uchiha Sasuke did not know how to be properly affectionate. He did not know how to show he loved people in ways that did not involve flinging himself before them when death swiftly approached. Sasuke was unfamiliar with tender actions but his instinct to stroke Sakura's face– to touch her cheeks, the nest where most of her tears pooled and remained at– had forced him into action.

The tender expression on Sasuke's face was unrecognizable to Sakura. She had seen it vaguely before, somewhere in the recesses of her mind. It was the first time she was seeing Sasuke with such an expression, so delicate, the harened planes of his face felt like they were softening. When she finally matched Sasuke's expression, it was years later, when she woke up to a dream of Itachi. She had dreamt of Sasuke's older brother, with eyes exactly the same as his, gentle eyes, soft smile and a quiet understanding of her love for Sasuke. Sasuke had Itachi's eyes after all.

"_Why?_" He questioned with a voice almost as soft and quiet as hers. His hands travelled past her cheeks, down her jaw, her neck, her shoulders and it stopped just a little after that. Underneath his fingers, he could feel her heart, the escalated beating, his proximity and lingering touch had sent her heart into a nervous frenzy. "How can you love me?"

Sakura's face scrunched up in a slight frown. _Was he teasing her? _She was not expecting such a question. She was not expecting a question she did not know the answer to. The seriousness of his eyes told her otherwise. She shifted, inching closer to Sasuke, closing the distance between them. Sasuke had retracted his hand from her chest and Sakura's hands were suspended in mid-air, her resolve and initial intention to touch Sasuke, to hold the side of his cheek, had wavered and she felt herself turned red in embarrassment as her hands dropped pathetically to her side.

She did not have the courage to touch Sasuke, not _yet_, afraid of the things in her heart he might learn the moment her fingers found his skin, the moment they truly connect. She dared not touch Sasuke, could not bring herself to touch him now, especially when she still occasionally picked up Sasuke's narrowing eyes, his fingers retreating back to their usual place on his temples and the slight wincing that he tried to cover…she still felt responsible for putting him in this state.

At this point, there was little that Sasuke, Naruto or Kakashi did not know about her, they were her family after all, but Sakura thought that Sasuke could wait before he found out how deep her love for him ran, the depths she was willing to scale or sink under. She could wait until she helped Sasuke through this path of recovery. Then, maybe when she finally touched him, she would not be so afraid of her own guilt and her own selfishness at wanting to have him, not just as Team 7, but as her _own_– a childish desire she had not shaken off since her adolescent days of crushing on Uchiha Sasuke.

She kept her eyes on his– emerald meeting onyx, pink and black melting together– and she willed herself to say something, _anything_. But, she had no words, no answer to Sasuke's question, nothing her heart could fathom into words so she found Sasuke's hands again and held it, bringing it to her lips, planting a chaste kiss on them. Her lips felt chapped and dry skin was flaking flaking from them, making her grow even more conscious of her action but the soft look that gradually filled Sasuke's face– the way his dark eyes lit up, if only slightly and his features relaxed with her touch, it banished her superficial worry that her lips were chapped, that her fingernails were chipped, that her hands were rough, that she was fallible and an imperfect woman. She only recalled the fact that in her hands was Sasuke's own.

Throughout the evening, Sasuke refused to leave Sakura's room in the hospital, insisting that he had an appointment with Tsunade late at night and it would be a hassle for him to make another trip down. He stationed himself at the corner of her room, sat at the edge of the sofa and busied himself with books he had recently purchased to help him pass time. He felt the same pain manifest itself in his temples but he forced himself to focus on the words appearing before him.

There were little things he could do for Sakura but he could at least be there for her and accompany her through her last evening and night in the hospital. He tried to convince himself that she needed him but he failed miserably.

In Sakura's world, there were many. He was not the only person she needed.

Throughout the next few hours he spent by Sakura's side, the pink-haired girl received a flurry of visitors. Ino, had rushed in, still in her ninja garb, covered in muck and dried blood from her mission. Her shoes left flecks of sand across the floor as she embraced the Sakura roughly.

Ino chastised her best friend and scolded her for not taking care of herself.

"You may be Haruno Sakura, but even you have your limits!" Ino slapped the girl jokingly on her arm, earning an emerald glare from Sakura. Sasuke watched as Sakura embraced Ino without fear, without hesitation and without restraint, even if Ino was dirty and covered in the remains of her last mission.

Her parents had visited again at night, having dropped by in the morning. Mebuki had reprimanded Sasuke earlier for serving Sakura red apples instead of green ones. The dark blonde woman shot him the same hardened glare since morning, clearly upset that her daughter was throwing her health away for Sasuke's sake. Kizashi offered Sasuke a wry smile, polite but wary. They offered Sakura an abundance of homemade food, brought a change of clothes and chastised her even more than Ino and Sasuke could tell how much they loved Sakura. Their faces scrunched up in genuine worry and their voices dripped with concern.

Hinata had dropped by with Naruto a little later, bringing with her two bouquet of flowers – "One's from Ino, she wanted me to pass you this when I was picking out some flowers." – Hinata had said with a smile, busying herself with decorating Sakura's room with flowers. Even if Sakura was only staying for another night. The Hyuga lady had greeted Sasuke with a polite nod before proceeding to huddle around Sakura.

Several genins he did not recognize poured in after with Ten Ten and Lee, clearly coming straight from school, Sasuke guessed from the way they referred to her as "sensei" that Sakura had taught them briefly in the Academy before. Their laughter and loud voices breaking the prolonged silence of the room.

He may only have three people whom he considered important in his life and who considered his life as important too, but, Sakura had a plentiful amount. In Sakura's world, there were many people who needed and loved her. And still, she chose to love him. It made him even more doubtful about the things he could do for her. When the plate of apples finished, courtesy of Sakura and her past students, Sasuke busied himself with cutting more.

–

**10.**  
_(21 years old. Sasuke and Sakura, together.)_

As Naruto busied himself with missions and pranks, Sakura at the hospital with her duties as head doctor and Kakashi with the new bookstore he had planned to set up, Sasuke was busy recovering. It was his third month attending "therapy" sessions with Tsunade, who had in the end, resolved to help the Uchiha overcome his fear of corpses, unconscious bodies of his loved ones and blood. The Godaime had the same consuming fear before and she was certain she could help Sasuke conquer it. It was the fifth month into his Xanax recovery and his dosage was now lesser than before. The withdrawal symptoms were starting to wane but he knew that his own mental stability and moods were prone to waxing and waning, like that of the changing moon.

It was the sixth month into his Xanax recovery when Sasuke and Sakura officially acknowledged each other as partners, having already danced along that side of intimacy for months. On a late night illuminated by the crescent moon, the sound of laughter bounced off the Uchiha compound. Sakura, Naruto and Sai had decided to stage an informal sleepover at Sasuke's place, alcohol had been smuggled by Sakura from her father's liquor store and simultaneously consumed, only Sasuke avoided the bottles of sake, for fear that it might trigger a relapse in his recovery.

Within an hour, Naruto and Sai were completely intoxicated. Their snores filled the room and in a corner was a trash bag drenched in vomit. Sakura had gotten up to dispose of it but ended up getting too nauseous from the stench. In the end, Sasuke assumed the responsibility and Sakura trailed behind him as they walked out into the long corridors of the Uchiha compound.

Sasuke dumped the pungent bag into the garbage bin and walked back to Sakura who was strolling beside him, admiring how the Uchiha compound looked under the light of the crescent moon. She was having trouble controlling her hiccups but she possessed a surprisingly high tolerance of alcohol.

On a late night illuminated by the crescent moon, there was a hiccupping medic named after cherry blossoms and a retired avenger who kept her company. Once, a long time ago, it had been the other way round. They were much older now, Sakura was a capable Jounin and Sasuke was due to enter his Chunin Exams in a couple of months, with Sakura as his instructor and Naruto and Sai (who promised to wait for Sasuke's recovery) as teammates.

They were older now and they knew things they did not before.

Sakura's hiccups continued on for another half hour before Sasuke resolved to stop them for her. He pinched her nose despite her protests and held it there for a few moments. Her skin felt hot and she burned from the contact of his skin against hers. When Sasuke finally released his fingers, her hiccups had disappeared although the flush on her cheeks remained.

They continued walking down the compound side by side, the cherry blossoms in the compound were still not in bloom and somehow Sasuke's hands were in Sakura's. They were not drunk, even if Sakura wanted to excuse their sudden unrestrained silliness as an act of drunkenness.

In an instant, Sakura dashed forward to catch a lone firefly, dragging Sasuke whose hand she still held behind her but he loosened his grip, letting her go, choosing instead to stay behind because then, he could _see_ her. Sasuke caught a glimpse of her back, bright, pale and a little more than ordinary. Sleep was close by but his eyes remained fixated on a singular sight, a sight that had accompanied him for so long.

Haruno Sakura transfixed Uchiha Sasuke.

A prolonged silence was growing between them.

Sasuke spoke, interrupting the silence. The loudness of his own voice and words scared him. He had only just found the courage to say the words that had always been at the tip of his tongue.

"I have always loved your back."

Sakura was taken aback by his proclamation, her cheeks turned an even darker shade of red and a joyous feeling swept over her. The night was young and Sakura decided to tease him a little more. The pink-haired medic, whose wide smile stretched from ear to ear, was seized by a surge of happiness. But, Sasuke only saw her back from where he was standing. He did not see her wide smile, her red cheeks or her smiling eyes.

He heard–

"What did you say, Sasuke-kun? I don't think I heard it." She was lying and he knew it. His words had been clear and audible in the quiet solitude of the night.

"I love you."

This time, his voice was quiet and uncertain, soft and inaudible. It was a secret, a distant murmur, it was his heart struggling to make his affections know and he was certain that Sakura would never be able to hear.

But, she _did_.

And once the words escaped his mouth, once the full weight of what he confessed to Sakura's back hit him, once he processed his words, he finally understood it.

Uchiha Sasuke was acting on instinct again and his instinct was that he loved Haruno Sakura.

He noticed her back trembling again and it felt like a sight from the past. But it lasted only for a moment because Sakura immediately turned around and extended her hand. Her hand was silver in the moonlight. It shone at him against their dark surroundings.

Sasuke knew if he accepted her hand, he was letting love into his heart again.

_(And when you loved, you always ran the risk of hate)_

There was fear in his heart, there was always Team 7 and there was…_Sakura_.

If Naruto was his other half in blood, a brother, Sakura was his other half in heart.

He accepts. He takes her hand and offers his battered heart in exchange.

–

**10½.**  
_(22 years old. Sakura breaks and Sasuke comforts his love.)_

The news of Tsunade's death hit Sakura hard. She was amongst the first few to hear of the news. It had been relayed to her painfully by Shizune, who took the pink-haired medic in her arms, two of Tsunade's beloved disciplines wrapped in a moment of grief, as the world continued spinning by.

Sasuke saw Sakura break for the third time– the_ first_ had been when he departed and she had cried her eyes out, begging for him to stay, the_ second _was when she had apologized profusely to him in the hospital – and this time was extremely unlike the first two instances. There was no sound coming from Sakura, no glassy emerald eyes, no tears streaming down her cheeks, no chokes or sobs, just a violent shaking in her shoulders and an uncomfortable stillness to her fallen figure, kneeled in front of the door to Tsunade's office.

The elders (outliving even Tsunade) were busy coming up with plans to elect the next Rokudaime and the Hokage's quarters buzzed with people moving in and out. There was a frenetic energy that surrounded Sasuke and Sakura, but in his eyes, there was only Sakura's fallen figure, hands stretched out but not daring to knock against the wooden door that had before been so familiar to her. She did not want to open the door and face an empty seat. She did not want to imagine the lifeless body of her mentor_– T_sunade's face covered in deep set wrinkles and lines, ones that she had cleverly and consciously covered while she was alive.

There was little time for Sakura to grief because she was immediately whisked up, forced to stand tall and strong when all she wanted to do was lie down in her bed and cry. The elders wanted her to make a speech to the villagers, as Tsunade's prized pupil and a notable public figure, she had a responsibility to play– she was tasked with making a statement to stir up hope and excitement for the next Rokudaime. Sakura played her part perfectly, eyes crinkling, lips taut in a wide smile as she addressed Konoha's public, but standing beside her, Sasuke noticed her shaking knees. He offered his hand under the podium and Sakura gripped it, nails sinking into his skin, hands tightly clasped over his. When she released his hand, her back straight as she stood tall and proud before the podium until the last of the audience left, red marks were beginning to blossom over the pale map of his skin.

Naruto offered Sakura invaluable comfort and words, the blonde understood her in a way that Sasuke could never. He never developed any form of attachment towards Orochimaru. The only mentor he had cared about was Kakashi and as far as he knew, the copy ninja was still alive and kicking. Naruto who had mourned Jiraiya's death years before understood Sakura deep in his bones. Sasuke remained silent as Naruto held Sakura's hands and they cried together.

Sasuke felt sad to bid Tsunade farewell too. He had deep respect for her even if he had initially disregarded and dismissed the Godaime. She had played a crucial part in his recovery, confiding in him her paralyzing fear of blood after her lover's death…and Sasuke had empathized with her. She had helped him conquer some of his fears with her self-crafted "therapy" and bit by bit, he had recovered. He was forever indebted to her. She was also the one who had mentored Sakura. Sasuke knew how Sakura viewed Tsunade as a mother of sorts, a mother not from the same blood, but a mother all the same. Anyone precious to Sakura was likely precious to him as well. Still, Sasuke was never as close to Tsunade as Naruto and Sakura were. He waited silently as Naruto and Sakura cried, huddled together and tried not to let their sobs get to him.

But, at the end of each day, it was not Naruto's hands, tears or words that Sakura sought. It was Sasuke's comfort. That thought puzzled him but he welcomed her in his arms, he welcomed her tears staining the fabric of his shirt and the red welts that formed when she clutched onto his hand too tight.

Sakura had lost patients before but she had never once lost a person she loved to death. She had never seen the person she loved appear before her as an unfeeling, unthinking and unspeaking corpse. This was Sakura's first death. Sasuke had been through multiple deaths, each one ripping out a part of his heart until he was convinced he had none left. Death felt almost like an innate part of him. Sakura will not stop hurting until a long time, he knew that. But, it pained his heart to see her cry without saying a word. The only words she uttered were the speeches she was forced to say.

She started speaking first after Tsunade's funeral. It started with comments on who the next Rokudaime would be. There were speculations, villagers were rooting for Naruto but the elders argued that he was too young.

"Kakashi-sensei." Sakura had suggested and Sasuke neither agreed nor disagreed. Most of the time, he tried not to let the thought of reclaiming that very seat consume him. He had once planned to take the seat of the Hokage and even now, that desire still burned in him. Being a Hokage meant he could make the reforms he so desired. But he was not a Jounin and even if he was a skilled ninja, he was not reputable or benevolent enough. If anything, the pink-haired female beside him would make a more suitable candidate. He imagined pink hair peaking from beneath the hokage's signature red hat and it brought a slight smirk to his lips.

But now, before he toyed around with thoughts of being Hokage or encouraging Sakura to pursue the seat of the Rokudaime, there was a pink-haired girl who he had to accompany through dark times and whose hand he wanted to make sure never woke up alone. Her hands always found his. Sakura was rambling now, a string of emotional words that stabbed at Sasuke because he knew how long she had withheld them.

"I haven't learnt everything from shishou yet. There were still things she wanted to teach me, things that I never got to master and….I will never be able to learn those things. I still haven't learnt everything from her. I never got to thank her…I never got to talk to her more." Sakura's eyes were watering again and her words were beginning to lose themselves in between her shallow breathing. But, Sasuke caught the last of her words– ones that he knew meant the most. "_I never surpassed her._"

They were seated on Sakura's bed and the door to Sakura's room was left open because Mebuki and Kizashi still held suspicions on Sasuke. Sasuke refrained from being touchy in Sakura's house, the slightest of hugs and hand holding would be interpreted the wrong way in the eyes of Mebuki's defensiveness and scorn for the Uchiha.

But tonight, he brought Sakura close to his chest, cradling her head to his chest, embracing her as he played with her hair, smoothing the tangles and knots in her pink tresses. She cried into his shirt and Sasuke felt each tear that slid down her cheek and buried itself in the fabric of his shirt. His hands moved to stroke her back, tender motions that he hoped would help comfort her and lull her into sleep. She was wearing a black dress. Sakura's back in terrifying black, a black that had enough power on its own to consume and suck the life and light out of her. But, her black dress and black back was almost completely covered by her messy pink hair, long from years of growing it out.

Her back was trembling, her shoulders shook, and the image of her back would resemble the one he had etched in his mind, nights ago where they were young– one desperate in love and another desperate to leave. But, this time, he had her back, her back was his arms and he wanted to yank whatever sadness that was pouring from her soul. Sasuke wanted to pull out any form of darkness clouding Sakura's riveting emerald eyes.

Later on, in between tears, muffled sobs and whispered words, Sakura spilled her heart again. She had spilled her heart to him many times before but not in this way. She was not afraid to let Sasuke know of her feelings of him, not afraid to put her health and her life on the line for him but…she had been afraid to let him know of the flickering feelings of self-worth she held heavy in her heart.

"I never surpassed her." Sakura had repeated again and Sasuke struggled to discern the true meaning her words.

With Sasuke's careful prying, fingers laced in hers, eyes regarding her gently, Sakura cried harder, the words worming their way out of her lips.

"I'm selfish. I feel so selfish. Shishou is dead, she's six feet underground, she's a corpse–" She stammered, her cruel words were forcing even more tears to materialize in her emerald eyes. "Here I am, thinking that, I never got the chance to learn everything I could from her. That I never got the chance to be like her or…to surpass her. That I never got to be anything more than _ordinary_."

She had not surpassed her master as so many had expected of her. In the end, she had just fallen short, breathless from chasing after people's backs, she had fallen inexplicably short from legendary.

It startled Sasuke that Sakura would think of herself as simply ordinary.

Haruno Sakura was arguably the most skilled medic in the entire ninja world. Her knowledge and mastery of poison, medical ninjutsu and modern medicine was largely unrivalled by anyone except Shizune who also acted as a mentor figure to the pink-haired girl. She was a legendary ninja, famed for her superhuman strength, her selflessness, her reliable nature and the fact that she had saved countless lives. Haruno Sakura was a heroine and well-loved by the people. She was the stuff of legends, a name deserving of its own fearsome title. She had been recommended for the Jounin rank _twice_, second to the prodigal Neji of their batch of ninjas and she eventually made Jounin when she was 21, beating her brilliant teammates Naruto and Sasuke. She had hailed from a civilian family, a liquor-store owning father and a mother who switched between jobs and had a shady background as a prior "yankee". She was never meant to be a ninja but she ended up becoming such a formidable one. Haruno Sakura had defied the odds. She was indispensable.

But, Sakura's insecurities were unrelenting. Sasuke suddenly remembered the distant look that Sakura had possessed when Team 7 had been instructed months ago to give a showcase to the graduating class of genin. Sakura had been the one who recited their history– the Uchihas, the Senjus, the Uzumakis– and when it came to her own, she had been uncomfortably succinct. As the throngs of genins crowded Naruto and him, eager to watch them perform their famed techniques and reenact their famous battle at the Valley of the End, he noticed Sakura from his peripheral vision, retreating to the back of the desk, busying herself with paperwork, filing, documents, _anything_.

The three of them had went for ramen later on and Sakura had recovered quickly, banishing his earlier worries. Her smiles were back, her hands effortlessly linked with his and as they (except for Sasuke) drank sake and she became slightly inebriated, she was planting kisses on Sasuke's lips, Naruto's and Kakashi's cheeks and even Sai argued for one and Sakura obliged. Yamato had looked uneasily at them and shrugged. But, the tear-stained words that Sakura uttered now had brought to mind the cold expression plastered on her face before.

Sakura had stared at Naruto and him from afar, a new feeling was creeping up to her, one that she had feared to acknowledge, but it had always been _there–_ the distant feeling of being so left out of a team that seemed to revolve and build itself around the duo's rivalry and innate connection to Konoha's greatest clans, the Senju and Uchiha. It had made her blood boil and her heart ached with a strangely acute sense of loneliness. She was a commoner with no special back story or grand history. She felt the only piece of Team 7 that did not fit.

"_You're Haruno Sakura_." Sasuke spoke, surprising Sakura as she looked at him quizzically. "You come from the Haruno clan…a family with a fierce mother and a loyal father. You are the famed disciple of Senju Tsunade, revered and known for your medical prowess and your status as an elite ninja." He continued, he can see Sakura's slow smile, the light in her emerald eyes as it glistened with tears.

"Sasuke-kun, I–"

"You are a part of Team 7." He stated that fact firmly and took a moment to pause, letting his statement sink in, because he needed Sakura to know that she was as much a part of Team 7 as Naruto and him were. In truth, there was no longer any Team 7 anymore. Team 7 no longer existed Konoha's updated files and paperwork. It existed only in aged archives. They no longer referred to each other by numbered teams, having long outgrown them since their genin days. But, there was always a Team 7 in Sakura's eyes, in Naruto's eyes and in his eyes. _Team 7, the only family he had now._ There was no Team 7 without Haruno Sakura, regardless of her background or her family's lack of involvement in the ninja world. She was a part of his family.

"There are many people who love you," He spoke, bringing to mind the faces of Sakura's friends, admirers, family and students. "Both _dead_ and _alive._" Sasuke added. A few tears rolled down Sakura's eyes, nestling themselves in the hollow of her neck.

"And there are many who think of you as the world." He finished with a triumphant grin.

She was a part of his world. Hands knotted in his, pink hair tickling the side of his face.

_She was his world. _

The world in cherry blossom colored hair and emerald eyes, in the crinkles that formed in her eyes when she smiled, the twitch in her lips as she resisted laughing or her work-roughened medic's hands and short fingers. His world is Sakura.

– to be continued –

–

**Notes:** I want to say I am SO sorry for uploading this chapter late, it turned out longer than I expected because there were so many details I wanted to squeeze in, editing ended up taking so much of my time, just polishing it to a state where it seemed presentable felt like a never-ending task but now that it's published, I'm quite happy with how it's all come down.

I've always been certain to emphasize on a few things between Sasuke and Sakura – the hand holding is one, the way they slowly regard each other's effect and Sasuke's fixation with her back, because I feel like a lot of what their relationship is built up on is _subtlety_, so hopefully, I managed to portray that well enough. I'm not sure if you noticed but I have a real joy at portraying characters disheveled and flawed, far from perfect and smooth, so my ninjas will always have hands that were worn and weathered, their hair will never be flawless and chances are their skin will always be caked in sweat, haha!

THANK YOU so much for all the kind reviews! Reading every one of them have really warmed my heart and gave me motivation to continue this even if I kept putting it off because of my lack of confidence. I will be replying to all of you in a bit but my heart also extends to my guest reviewers who I unfortunately cannot reply personally to. Thank you! I love you all– reviewers, followers, those who have favourited my writing and those who are currently reading it, I love you all dearly._ I know_, I said in the previous chapter, that this will be the final one but I thought, I would save the_ last instance_ as an **epilogue** of sorts, considering how long this chapter already is!

I will be posting the last chapter at the _end of this week when I'm off work. _It's already written out, just needs some fine-tuning. _Arigato gozaimasu!_**_  
_**


	5. The beginning and the end

**Decennial****  
****_adj._**_**  
**_Relating to or lasting for ten years.

_–_

"I… I love you with all my heart!"

_–_

**Chapter Five**

_–_  
**  
****Epilogue  
**_(The present– 24 years old. This is where Sasuke and Sakura end and begin.)_

The Uchiha compound was covered in _pink_– the pink of cherry blossoms that serpentine the long corridors and the gentle pink of his bride's hair as it cascaded in soft waves over her shoulders, brushing against her hips. _Pink_. His cheeks were turning pink too and his heart beat was quickly escalating. He tried to calm himself by focusing on the rhythmic beating of his pulse, attempting to count them in order to steady himself but the incessant hammering and loud thuds of his own heart distracted him.

_Badump_. His heart was braving through the rocky turbulence of nervousness. Sweat trickled from his hairline and he swept back his fringe irritably. The thick fabric of his kimono was sticking to his skin and the gel in his hair seemed futile against his best efforts at taming the wild tangents of his hair. A moment ago, the mirror had told him he looked like a presentable groom but now under the glaring sun as he battled tides of anxiety and his unruly hair, he felt ill-prepared. His jittery nerves were turning him into a jittery mess. A real mess of worries were beginning to bubble under his cool pretense of pressed lips and downcast eyes.

Dark eyes took in pink again. He tried to focus his attention on Sakura's back– the curve of her taut shoulders and cherry strands obscuring the small square he had reinforced in his mind, time and time again. When Sakura turned to face him, he instinctually turned away, as though suddenly conscious of how awfully close they were (he can imagine her breath on his neck, her lips on his, her fingers weaving through his hair), even if they were not standing close at all.

His eyes darted awkwardly to the crowd of people chattering impatiently as they waited for the ceremony to begin. The ruckus only unnerved him even more and he played with his fingers, a nervous habit he had inherited from Sakura who had a tendency to bite her fingernails. Sasuke remembered this same distinct mix of trepidation and nervousness when he had approached Itachi years back. He had been ready to slaughter his brother, coal eyes burning at the thought of fulfilling his goal as an avenger.

Now, he had no brother and no family in blood. He had a past written in blood; unforgettable even to those who desired to forget and he had a future before him– a new family not of fire and blood, but of earth, wind, water and his own fire. He had Sakura and he would officially have her, in the following exchange of rings that would happen later on. He had Sakura. He had his future.

Sasuke walked closer to Sakura, inching forward to a _future_, his feet were moving one step further away from the past that had incised itself on his skin, like shackles that had kept him captive. He noticed Sakura's hands covered in customized gloves of a sheer white lace variety. The gossamer fabric were misleading, imbued with connotations that Sakura's hands were fine, thin or flimsy but Sasuke thought otherwise.

Her hand, her fingers, _Sakura_, was not like the fragile thread that broke or wore easily. The texture of her hands was something he could bring to mind instantly. These were hands he had held for countless times. A lover's hands that gripped his tightly and stubbornly, a medic's hand that had wrestled with death and a fighter's balled fists capable of crushing bones and shaking the earth.

When she turned to look at him, he refrained from averting her gaze. Emerald eyes hold him steady and hold him still. He saw her lips break into a wide smile, teeth pearly white and lips shiny with a thin layer of pink gloss. Her eyes were accentuated with a dash of dark green. They were closed and crinkled, emerald orbs hidden behind long creases and light eyelashes.

Sakura is unbearably beautiful, even if her sea-foam green nail polish shone a little too brightly for his preference.

She extended her hand to him (like she had done so many times in the past) and the sunlight caught her skin at the exact moment he took her hand. It was the stuff of fairytales and clichés, the kind of novels Sakura would find herself endlessly engrossed in. This was Uchiha Sasuke accepting her hand and her heart, once and forever. The light illuminated her skin and dipped it in sunny golden hues.

Sakura's golden hand was the silent invitation to a future that Sasuke had always been uncertain about. When Sasuke finally held her fingers in his, he silently accepted the invitation that accompanied it. _Sasuke lets her in._ He really lets her in– unlocked the door to his innermost chamber and the core of his being, an organ pumping the same Uchiha blood he was born with and that he had seen slain and disappeared from the world, his heart, Uchiha Sasuke welcomed Haruno Sakiura in his arms.

He imagined how her cheeks would feel cold against his skin, the image of her breath coming out in white swirls also appeared before his mind. She had made camp outside the door of his heart, holding his hand through the door flap, waiting for the day where he thawed enough, where he felt strong enough to love someone else with the same ferocity as he did before. She had waited outside the drab door that divided the walls of his heart and the empty corridors of snow-white coldness. She waited in the cold to return home to where she belonged,_ in him_ and _with him_. She was here to thaw his heart, which even in its natural fire, was still ice-covered and frozen. And she was as cold as someone who had played in the snow for hours. Hours spent waiting in cold corridors while she held his hand, warm from his typically high body temperature. And still, she managed to warm him, to stir something quiet and profound within him. It did not took long for warmth to finally spread itself through his entire being.

He let her in fully into his life, as though she hadn't already permeated his entire being. But this is official, _this is real_ and he needed to remind himself too that this was thought put into action and this was not just him loving Sakura in mind and in heart but him loving her in everything, in every waking moment he woke up to pink tresses, pale shoulders and open lips and_ in this life_. A raw surge of wild emotions rumbled within him, elicited just by the weight of her hands in his. He felt warm now and contented, but there was something bristling in the surface. Sasuke forcefully chased away the dark thoughts that crept at the corner of his mind.

He knew the risks of letting someone so fully into his heart.

And–

Right from the very start, his heart had always leaned towards Haruno Sakura. He had listened to her offer tears and promises of an undying love to him when he could have walked away from her and her heart. He had been willing to trade her life for his, against a monster that he could not defeat. He was willing to stop, to wait and to be patient, when he had been anything but as an avenger. For her, he had given her a_ goodbye_ (the closure she so desperately sought and he presumed to have given), when he could have left her gasping on a cold night. _Thank you_, he had said. Steady words that had bounced off her quivering back. _Had he mixed up gratitude and goodbyes or were they one and the same in the dictionary of a 12-year old Uchiha Sasuke?_

Sasuke knew now that he had spiraled into yet another kind of madness, a lunacy so common and celebrated, that he did not recall his family's darkness instead, he thought of colors, bright bursts of brilliant color. He was slowly beginning to measure his life out in colors (_and black was not a color, Sakura had insisted_).

He was falling.

Plummeting.

Hurtling.

Crashing–

Falling in _love_.

There was the_ blue _of Naruto's eyes– a beautiful topaz that shone vividly with conviction, the sunny _yellow_ of his best friend's unruly mob, the navy _blue _mask of an instructor that felt more like a father, tufts of spiky _silver_ hair that reminded him of the sky when it rained and the unforgettable cherry blossom _pink_ of the girl he loved, _emerald _eyes that watered too easily, the stark _white_ of her lab coat and her Haruno circle, and _red–_ not of blood, of death, of fire and of a clan, but of Sakura's back.

Sakura's grip on his tightened and Sasuke matched his own hold on hers.

They have held hands multiple times before– on walks, in their sleep or in dangerous situations where pain took over and her hand was the only thing that secured him. He enjoyed her reassuring hold. It anchored him to the terrifying reality awaiting him (newness scared Sasuke, newness was terrifying, newness was unimagined, a future had been unimaginable before)— of marrying Sakura, the promise of happiness, of making a new home and family, of new beginnings and of a family (a brother in blond hair and blue eyes, a surrogate father of sorts in a mask, silver hair and creased eyes and in Sakura, the girl whose hand he doesn't tire from holding), the possibility of letting sunlight fill in the dank darkness of his home, letting it illuminate the cobwebs in the corners of his past and to welcome another Uchiha home after so long.

Sasuke remembered years before when physical contact with Sakura ended up in a strangled scream, the deadening sound of screeching birds and a poisoned kunai. She squeezed his hand when she saw him drifting. Sakura needed him to know that she was not thinking of the chidori that almost killed her or Sasuke's venomous words in the past. She tried not to think of how she had also tried to kill him. They had killed each other before (_Sasuke had killed her many times_) – one in hatred and another in love but it was never out of indifference.

Now, they stood beside each other, fingers that had been poised to attack the other before now lovingly entwined– inseparable and _together_ – a quiet union before their solemnization.

There were a few things Haruno Sakura knew with certainty– she would always be curious and an avid reader, cooking was not her strong suit, she was forever indebted to Tsunade-sama, Team 7 was her second family, her home away from home, Ino was the sister she never had, her parents loved her dearly and she loved them too, she was proud of being a "Haruno", not a clan, just a family of unruly distinct inidividuals, her hair would always receive curious questions and–

She would always love Uchiha Sasuke. Even with bloodied wrists slashed viciously, with vicious eyes ready to kill, with a soul broken from having gone to hell and come back, with wrecked sobbing and rabid hallucinations, with the weight of his entire clan on his shoulders, with a graveyard of relatives and with…charcoal eyes smiling at her, with hands that grasped hers forcefully and with a smug grin that made her heart ached with nostalgia.

The feel of Sakura's strength, of her hand and of her_ so close_ beside him was a reminder that she was _here_.

They were here.

And they will always be Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Sasuke– no matter how many years they had spent apart, no matter how they had tried to end each other, no matter how long he had spent pushing himself into the abyss, no matter how long she had spent getting used to absence in the form of the boy she loved, no matter how her back changed and how she was no longer behind him, no matter how he started off maintaining his distance from her before moving closer to protect her, to watch over her and then a little closer because he had wanted to kill her once.

Now, he jerked even closer, close enough to slid a ring into her finger. Her hands felt calloused from work, from being a ninja, from loving, from being Sakura.

They were Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Sasuke, who always had a way back to each other, like a thread, a red thread from her kimono, like the blood that streamed from his eyes when he summoned black flames, like the Uchiha symbol and like her red blouse, a thread that connected her to him.

She was there, she is here and she will always be by his side.

_This is where they end and begin._

Sasuke was not the same as he was before. He had always been known as the sole survivor of the Uchiha clan– the only one alive in a sea of corpses, of tombstones and of the smell of powder white bones, the cremated remains of bodies whose wishes he had finally honored when he found his strength. But, the cadence of his life and its nuances were slowing changing before his eyes.

Another Uchiha– one whose title had been inherited, who was not birthed in fire and blood and who did not possess dirty blood of hatred, of obsessive love, of a ceaseless hunger for power and of revenge running through her veins would come home with him. She would sleep on the same bed as he and they would resume. They would begin again.

(Sakura would inherit his last name but she would not inherit his demons, his burdens or the madness inherent in his blood– _he would not let her._)

Uchiha Sasuke slipped the ring into his wife's finger and kissed her, gentle at first and then hard. The ring was a silver band of white light on her finger with a little fan engraved on it. On the inside, a tiny circle had been engraved personally by Sasuke but the detail would only come to Sakura after she had the time to think. She had not noticed yet, her eyes glimmered at the beautiful thin ring that adorned her fingers. He wanted her to find out herself.

Inscribing the Haruno symbol on her ring, along with the Uchiha fan, was their beginning.

Because it was not about the Uchiha anymore.

It was about her and him and their future together.

Their faces were still close when he felt something liquid slid down her cheek. Tears shed by an Uchiha with a clan but no family and a pink-haired kunoichi with no clan but a loving family. They were one now and the sound of her name, Uchiha Sakura– cherry blossom petals paired up with the fire and blood of the Uchiha clan felt like a beautiful contradiction. It matched the scenery and place they had chosen for their ceremony.

When Sasuke looked up, he saw the Uchiha compound with cherry blossom trees in full bloom. The sight of cherry blossom petals blending in with the landscape of the Uchiha compound left Sasuke wrung with emotions and another tear fell. Sakura wiped it, a soft giggle escaping her lips.

"Haruno Sasuke, you must not cry or I will too." She whispered into his ear before bursting into fits of giggles. It was an inside joke between the two, shared between late nights in bed when the crescent moon was up and sleep was far in their minds. Sakura had teased him on taking on her family name while she took on his.

Sasuke laughed too but it was not because he thought his name sounded funny with hers.

Inside jokes, casual hand holding and being happy still felt a little surreal to him. He recalled years spent training, fighting and planning, there had never been time for anything other than revenge. But now, he had time for other small things– mundane, common and even banal– still, they were moments he treasured and found himself laughing at.

He was laughing at himself, at how tense he had been, how unwilling he was to relax into an easy lifestyle– the sunrise and sunset seen through bleary eyes, peeking through Konoha's rooftops instead of a blanket of endless sky set against the training field, a vision he had before taken in drained red eyes. Waking up to Sakura, groggy in bed, rather than waking up alone in a training field, his body sore and pained from overexertion.

Insignificant things, habits, patterns and falling into a life that did not revolve after mindlessly chasing goals– these were things he appreciated. And then there was also holding Sakura's hand on rainy days, when they took strolls or reaching out to touch her without needing reason. He was holding her hand out of his own desire to, a personal urgency. There was no need for any justification.

He used to run in such a utilitarian fashion, every action he did and every step he took had a purpose and contributed to the final goal and now, all of those had withered away.

Sakura beamed at him and Sasuke focused solely on her. His own eyes were reflected back in her emerald ones and he never saw the darkness of his clan or the infamous curse of the hatred. He saw himself happy, in love and ready to begin.

"I don't think of dying anymore," Sasuke choked out and Sakura's hand held the side of his face, warm and tender, a flicker of surprise crossed her features for a split second but she listened, caught off-guard by Sasuke's confession. "_I think of the future._"

They embraced and the world watched.

When they finally parted from each other, Sasuke's eyes followed Sakura as she jumped into the loving embrace of her teary parents, her father breaking into loud wrenching sobs and her mother smiling with tears in her eyes.

He then saw Ino, Hinata, Ten Ten, Karin and Shizune gathering close to Sakura, smothering her with happy words, tears and hugs. Naruto tackled her roughly, his weight and strength causing her to lose her balance and they both tumbled to the ground, laughing as the blonde cried in her hair and Sasuke grunted, displeased with the scene. Kakashi helped Sakura up while chastising Naruto for dirtying Sakura's lovely kimono (the kimono that he had paid for). The blonde's expression soured slightly as he wiped away the remnants of the tears that were nested in his cheeks. He found his place back by Hinata's side as the two chatted about something that Sasuke could not discern.

Sasuke noticed now that Kakashi was hugging Sakura, the copy ninja had rested his chin on her head and he was murmuring quiet words of affirmation that Sasuke could not pick up. Sakura's smile and tears were hint enough that Kakashi had said something sentimental _(typical of his old age_, Sasuke thought). But, her tears were not salty pain-ridden ones. They streamed down messily, as she blew her nose into a tissue that was shoved to her by Ino. Sai stood by awkwardly, uncertain whether to embrace the pink-haired girl. On his pale skin were lips stretched tight in a wide smile, he was rambling on to fill up the silence that was growing between Sakura and him when the pink-haired medic interrupted him, pulling him into a rough hug, her arms reached to yank Yamato close as well.

Sakura was well loved by many. The sight of people continuously making their way to show Sakura their affections made his heart clench. There were faces he recognized from his generation of ninjas, there were the jounin instructors and then there were genins, young and rowdy, as well as civilians who Sakura had grown close to during her tenure as a trainee under Tsunade. She had kept in contact with them all through her years of working in the hospital and even now, as she went into her second year of being head doctor.

Even Gaara and his siblings were here, having made a special trip down to Konoha to attend the wedding ceremony. The sight of Gaara this close to Sakura made Sasuke's eyes grew alert, his mind replaying memories of their past encounter with the beast that had before threatened to consume Gaara's sanity. But, he relaxed after receiving Sakura's exasperated stare, she had noticed his death stare and he was observant enough to recognize how fond the red-haired Kazekage and his siblings seemed to be of Sakura. The trio surrounded her with hearty greetings, congratulating her repeatedly. Kankurou seemed especially grateful to Sakura, even years after his incident with Sasori's lethal poison that had left him dangling precariously close to Death's hook. They offered her an abundance of gifts, specially delivered from Sunakagure and Sakura's joy at seeing some of her favorite sweet pastries made her emerald eyes glow even brighter.

He understood why people warmed up to her because he did too,_ she was warm_, he thought, _not like Naruto's sun but_ _like...fire_.

(And it did not surprised him later when he produced a piece of paper to Sakura whose immediate contact with it turned it into ashes. _Fire_, he thought. _Her affinity is fire._ Kakashi and Naruto had betted on water. They were half-correct because her other elemental affinity was water. In fact, Sakura's delicate and unrivalled mastery of her chakra meant that she could effectively oscillate between the various elements, but she did not possessed Naruto's unending reserves of chakra so she had her limitations. But, her affinity was still stated in stone. It was decided by fate. _Fire first. Water was next._ Sai had insisted earth but Sasuke knew that she was _fire_– warm and brilliant, daring and brave. One day, he would teach her his clan's technique. He would watch bright flames escape from her lips and Sasuke would think to himself that Sakura was more an Uchiha than she ever initially let on.)

Sasuke received his own barrage of tears and hugs. Naruto squeezed him a little too tightly for comfort, tanned fingers clutching his shoulders and then, the blonde begun to wail loudly, unafraid of embarrassment or causing a scene. Sasuke returned the hug and tears. The two of them only separate when Kakashi came around and gifted the Uchiha with another suffocating hug and even the masked man was crying now, tears staining the fabric of his mask. Sai patted the Uchiha gently on the back and Yamato grinned at him from afar.

Suigetsu and Juugo had made a trip down from the neighboring villages (where they had gone on a 'tour' with Karin who came home earlier in preparation for the wedding). The duo had arrived late to the wedding despite Juugo's insistence on punctuality. Both enveloped Sasuke in a tight hug, even if Sasuke tried to shrug off the emotion emmiting from his former teammates. Suigetsu was grinning and Juugo's face was scrunched up in clear discomfort as he tried to hold back his tears.

Karin seemed oddly quiet, unlike her characteristically chatty self, she had one arm looped around Suigetsu and another around Sasuke. She struggled to find the proper words to say and Sasuke could sense the uncomfortable situation she had found herself in. Instead of saying something sentimental, she threatened him, in true Karin style, a fiery Uzumaki red-head through and through.

She chewed on her lips, tears welling up in her eyes before she finally found the words to say. Instead of flaky and flirty confessions he was accustomed to receiving from her years ago, Karin had warned him to take proper care of Sakura (she had made extremely good friends with the Konoha ladies, especially Ino and Sakura, Sasuke soon realized that Karin and Ino acted like Sakura's own defense squad, ready to jump on him should anything befell on their favorite pink-haired medic).

Sasuke was going to be enlisting the help of his former teammates to revive the Uchiha Police Force. They were going to be its first three members.

Just as Sasuke was ready to make his way back to Naruto who was hollering at him, Gaara waved at him, approaching him swiftly. The dark-haired Uchiha greeted the Kazekage with a slight nod and waited for Gaara to talk, sensing the words left unspoken on Gaara's lips.

"I still remember them." Gaara spoke, after clearing his throat.

"Remember what?" Sasuke questioned harshly, his defensiveness kicking in.

"Her eyes." Gaara replied. When he noticed Sasuke's defensiveness, he elaborated, hoping that the Uchiha would not misread his words. "_Sakura's eyes._ Her face when she protected you with her life...after I tried to kill you. I still remember it vividly even after so many years." A clipped laugh escaped his throat as the red-haired Kazekage tried to dispel the rising tension.

"Why are you telling me this?" Eyebrows narrowed, frown set on his lips, Sasuke looked his usual wary self, his voice was dripping with suspicion.

"Sakura made me remember what it was like to love someone so fiercely and fully. I won't forget her eyes." Gaara offered Sasuke a smile. "I knew that this day would come. I knew she loved you. I– we were just waiting for you to return her feelings. And you did. Not surprising but surprising all the same." He continued, cool even under Sasuke's scorching stare.

Sasuke's features softened. "Aa." It was the only words– sound would be more accurate– he could force out of his lips after hearing all that Gaara had said.

Gaara laughed. Sasuke was back to his usual charming self, full of monosyllabic quips. "You don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to know. I wish you both happiness. She deserves it." He said and Sasuke was caught by surprise at Gaara's careful omission.

"You noticed?" A smile played on the kazekage's lips. "You do too, Sasuke. You deserve happiness with her. Remember our battle years back when I tried to convince you that revenge was a lost cause? That yours was a quest doomed to fail and that you best give up and return home with Naruto?"

Sasuke nodded, bits of the fight resurfaced in his mind, although the exact details were blurry.

"I should have mentioned Sakura too." Gaara muttered.

"What matters now is that I'm here." Sasuke replied curtly, brushing off events of the past and still feeling slightly suspicious about the Kazekage. "I'm here to stay."

Gaara smiled and excused himself shortly, returning back to his siblings who were engaged in a conversation with other ninjas.

As Sasuke parted after being tackled by Naruto for the second time, his eyes took in the crowd. The typically empty corridors of the Uchiha compound were bustling with life and chatter. It reminded him of his childhood, where most nights felt alive and noisy, where he associated home with the ruckus, the heat and the bright lights. Sasuke took the chance to properly take in the mass of people who had gathered for Sakura and his union. He wanted to thank them personally but he did not know where to start. Gratitude did not come easy to the Uchiha whose only words of thank you had only ever been uttered to the back of a pink-haired girl. Numerous chairs had been lined along the long street of the Uchiha compound and he recognized some faces but the figure seated in the far back brought him face to face with his past.

Dark hair and fair skin with a gentle smile, the image assaulted him. Sasuke was crying again, this time a little uncontrollably and uncharacteristically.

The figure he saw in the back was Uchiha Itachi.

The sunlight hid Itachi's face and Sasuke could barely make out any of his features in its glaring light except for the familiar crooked smile that graced thin lips. When Sasuke closed his eyes, he imagined Itachi's smile widening and he even heard his brother's voice– a soft _"Congratulations" _that made his heart tightened even more. Part of him knew that this was just a figment of his imagination, a hallucination he had conjured in his overwhelming happiness but he wanted it so desperately to be real.

Sasuke finally opened his eyes again to find that Itachi was gone. In his place, only a soft patch of sunlight remained. He tried with his might to conjure up the image of his brother again but he failed, nothing materialized and the rays of sunlight that occupied the lone chair at the back only seemed to intensify. He attempted to seek for his parents in this crowd, to pull them from the memories swirling in his head but nothing materialized. But, he saw no one. He could not see them, even as hallucinations. A thought flashed in his mind as he dwelled on his parents. His parents would not have been too happy with Sakura and his union. He grinned a little, remembering how traditional and strict his parents used to view weddings in their clan.

When he found his way back to Sakura, he noticed her back, not surprisingly. She was chatting animatedly with her relatives, resembling her in light hair and fair skin. Sasuke's eyes zoomed in on Sakura's back, his eyes taking in a fan– a small symbol sewn on the kimono of his wife accompanied by the circle of her family. Sasuke had requested for it to be sewn along the Uchiha fan. It was a symbol of a new beginning for his broken clan. Sakura and her family mattered because they were his family too.

From the corner of his eyes, beside him, staring just as intently at Sakura, he made out the figures of two people he had missed before. He saw his mother– long ebony hair fashioned into a neat bun that complimented the elaborate kimono she was decked out in. It was Sasuke's favorite kimono on her. A dark red kimono patterned with Uchiha fans and stylistically rendered flames that seemed like it had been customized especially for her. Mikoto's eyes took in Sakura, her eyes were guarded and cool, his mother was judging his blushing bride and Sasuke felt himself growing nervous, like a young boy who waited nervously for his mother's important verdict.

Sasuke wanted to let his mother know everything about Sakura but he stopped himself. He was afraid to say one word, one word was all it took to break the spell and this delusion could stand to last a few seconds longer. He kept silent as he waited for his parents to finish taking in Sakura. The look of understanding that surfaced in his mother's eyes moments later, as she saw Sakura, told Sasuke everything he needed to know.

He had their approval. They knew.

Mikoto's lips turned into a smile when she faced her husband who had his arms across his chest. Fugaku wore the same dark blue kimono as Sasuke. It was a simple kimono with no patterns, styled only in the varying shades of blue. The only image was that of the Uchiha symbol visible on the back collar. Sasuke's kimono, unlike his father's which only bore the lone Uchiha fan, had another symbol embroidered on to match Sakura's. It was in the shape of a small white circle that he had memorized by heart. He had it sewn on his father's kimono.

Sasuke was broken out of his reverie when Sakura hugged him roughly from the back, seizing him and forcing him to release the breath he had held in surprise. Mikoto and Fugaku faded before his eyes, like a bright flash of lightning. His eyes watered even as he fought to keep them from falling. This sensation of losing and simultaneously finding was familiar. He had lost the ghosts of his parents and he had found Sakura.

He reached to touch her hand which had been crossed over his chest. His fingers worked to pry her hand apart because he wanted to hold her fingers. He held them tightly, enjoying the feel of her ring pressuring against his skin, leaving a slight imprint.

Sasuke refused to let go of her hand. Not even when the guests made their way to the food and they both began to eat, seated just beside one another. His hand held hers under the table as she smiled and chatted away with her relatives. Sasuke was seated on a table full of Sakura's relatives and he was not frightened because he had her hand in his and she was wearing his ring, they were one and together.

His hand in hers was also his way of telling her that he was here, beside her, that he was no longer an avenger, a forlorn Uchiha, or the absence in her heart...and of the _last fact_ that the history books will forever remember — that _he loves her_.

_"I… I love you with all my heart!… If you were to stay here with me, there would be no regrets… because every day we'd do something fun, we'd be happy I swear!… I would do anything for you! so… Please just stay with me!"_

And he stayed.

For the next ten years of their lives.

The following ones and the ones another that.

For this lifetime and all eternity.

– fin –

–

**Notes: EDIT. Thank you Lenneth for creating such a beautiful graphic of my fic, you can check it out on tumblr here– **_alexbenedetto (tumblr) /post/71935503073/sakura-always-made-sure-to-remember-him-of-a-few_**_._**_ Alternatively, you can get a direct link from my profile._ Thank you _SO_ much for all the support, reviews, follows and favorites, I appreciate it immensely. Writing Decennial was both joy and heartache– revisiting painful scenes between Sasuke and Sakura, having Sasuke go through harsh turbulent times and putting him under such pain felt like taking a stab at two of my favorite characters, but it was rewarding to know that in the end, they got the happy _beginning_ they so deserved. As 2013 comes to a unceremonious end, Decennial also comes to an end, which I found strangely poetic and fitting.

I had to put off editing this because I was so afraid that this was not the best finale and ending I could give to Decennial. And it's always sad to see something come to an end. As much as I would have loved to write more for them in this anthology of sorts, I think from here on out, our imaginations could do the work. Sasuke and Sakura will always be bound to each other, red thread of fate or not, I'm sure they will find their way back home and back to each other. Let's hope Kishimoto gives us that.

As of now, I have a few other story ideas swirling in my mind, nothing concrete yet, but who knows how soon inspiration will strike me? Please support me on my future endeavors! Happy New Year's in advance and lots of love! _Arigato gozaimasu_!

You can hit me up at thegoldengirl (at tumblr) if you ever want to talk or leave me a message :)


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